Cryptocurrencies Prices Plunge; Binance Acquires Trust Wallet

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Investing.com – Cryptocurrencies prices continued to dive on Wednesday after hitting its one-week low in the previous session. Binance, the second largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, announced its acquisition of the Trust Wallet on Tuesday.

Bitcoin was down 7.72% from the last 24 hours to $7,538 at 1:02AM ET (05:02 GMT) on the Bitifinex exchange.

Ethereum also plunged 9.42% to $415.52 on the Bitifinex exchange.

Ripple fell 2.3% to $0.4301 on the Poloinex exchange, while Litecoin traded at $77.306, down by 6.02% in the last 24 hours.

Binance said on Tuesday that it acquired Trust Wallet, a mobile wallet founded in 2017 that supports Ethereum and more than 20,000 different Ethereum-based tokens. The merge of an undisclosed amount is expected to improve Binance’s services and safety for users, according to some analysts.

Trust Wallet founder Viktor Radchenko said that the company plans to also add support for other blockchains including Bitcoin in the future.

In other news, Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S., hired the former global head of compliance at Pershing LLC, Jeff Horowitz, to be its chief compliance officer.

Asiff Hirji, Coinbase president, said in a blog post that “as Coinbase - along with the cryptocurrency space as a whole - grows and matures, continued regulatory compliance across all the varying jurisdictions globally will be critical.”

Meanwhile, reports suggested that confidence in cryptocurrency seemed to be growing in Australia, as the government invested $1.6 million on Tuesday in a blockchain initiative to boost its sugar production industry, which is estimated to be valued at $1.2 billion in 2016/17. The distributed ledger technology is expected to reduce costs, increase efficiency and enhance transparency, according to reports.

However, a survey from Gallup and commissioned by Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) revealed that only 2% of investors in the U.S. own bitcoin and only 1% plan to investment in cryptocurrencies in the near future.

Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman is also skeptical about the development of cryptocurrencies. In his column on The New York Times on Tuesday, he said that “a total collapse is a real possibility.”

by: Investing.com
source: https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/cryptocurrencies-prices-plunge-binance-acquires-trust-wallet-1554489