Cryptocurrencies were lower on Tuesday, with Bitcoin struggling to get out of the $4,000 range.
Bitcoin fell 0.85% to $4,009.40 on the Investing.com Index, as of 9:06 AM ET (14:06 GMT).
Digital coins have fallen dramatically in recent weeks, with Bitcoin trading at 80% less than its value a year ago. News of regulatory scrutiny and a hard fork in Bitcoin cash are some of the reasons analysts have said volatility has returned to the market.
Cryptocurrencies overall were slightly lower, with the total coin market capitalization at $129 billion at the time of writing, compared to $130 billion on Monday.
Ethereum, or Ether, decreased 0.41% to $111.70 and Litecoin was at $31.58, down 0.3%, while XRP slumped 0.6% to $0.35584.
Mati Greenspan, a senior market analyst at eToro, told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin and other cryptos are less volatile now than they were a year ago.
“Price action has a way of perpetuating and fear starts building up and then people say, it’s because of the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, it’s because of the SEC, it’s because of Tether. All of those stories add to the fear. But really, what we’re seeing is a simple technical breakout to the downside and not a break of the crypto industry, which is very strong at the moment,” he said.
The fall in digital coins is due to technicals, and influencing investor sentiment, he added. Often Bitcoin sees a huge price increase, after which “you generally need to see a pullback,” he said.
In other news, the latest digital exchange ErisX raised $27.5 million from investors including Fidelity and Nasdaq ventures, Reuters reported. The exchange expected to trade bitcoin, litecoin, ether and futures next year, pending regulatory approval.