Investing.com – Bitcoin was trading steady on Thursday morning in a relatively narrow range between $56,500 and $58,500.
Cardano underperforms
One top-10 cryptocurrency that has underperformed this week is Cardano. The sixth largest cryptocurrency by market cap has declined over 10% in the last week, yesterday falling to its lowest level since 9th August.
On this day, Cardano had started its Alonzo test network before the introduction of smart contracts. This triggered a huge rally in the coin as smart contract functionality opens to the door to Decentralised Finance (DeFi) and Decentralised Applications (dApps).
After hitting a high above $3.00 in September, Cardano now trades around $1.65.
The catalyst for the move lower this week was a new policy update from the trading platform eToro. In a blog post on Tuesday, the Israel-based company said it will be limiting Cardano and Tron for users in the US. From 26th December, US customers will no longer be able to open new positions in Cardano and Tron. Staking for the two assets will end on 31st December.
eToro said the changes are due to “business-related considerations in the evolving regulatory environment”.
Speaking following the eToro announcement, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said his team was not informed of any regulatory concerns.
“From our side we had no indication of this step by eToro and it is very unfortunate that we were not informed. At least we would have been able to understand their motives better then.”
However, Hoskinson added that the move by eToro would have little impact on liquidity.
“This has no significant impact on ADA liquidity, billions of dollars are turned over every day … it was a relatively small trading market, but that’s the nature of things, liquidity comes and goes … and of course everyone has different regulatory thresholds.”
Metaverse cryptocurrencies popular
Cryptocurrencies linked to the metaverse remain popular.
Decentraland is one of the best performing cryptocurrencies in the last 24 hours with a gain of over 10%. Earlier this week, an area of real estate in the Decentraland world sold for a record $2.4 million.
The Sandbox, which is now in the top 40 cryptocurrencies after a 90% rally in the last seven days, is up another 4% today. The Sandbox is another virtual world where users can create, build, buy and sell digital assets in the game. The virtual world has more than 165 partners, including Snoop Doog, Deadmau5 and the Smurfs.
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