Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies traded slightly lower on Monday even though headlines of regulatory scrutiny began to fade while Justin Sun started to make public who he would invite to lunch with Warren Buffett to teach the “Oracle of Omaha” about digital coins.
Total cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped to $285.12 billion by 10:51 AM ET (14:51 GMT), compared to $291.09 billion a day earlier.
Among the top five, Bitcoin fell 1.9% to $10,317.3 on the Investing.com Index, Ethereum lost 2.5% to $215.69, XRP traded down 2.0% to $0.31745, Litecoin sank 5.7% to $92.076, while Bitcoin Cash declined 2.7% to $306.33.
Last week the cryptocurrency sphere was under attack from global officials who insisted that the sector must be subjected to more scrutiny, including multiple U.S. government officials - Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and even U.S. President Donald Trump - who expressed concerns regarding digital coins, including Bitcoin and Facebook's Libra.
Despite the G7’s insistence that the cryptocurrencies such as Libra needed to be as tightly regulated as possible or Mnuchin’s assurances that “very, very strong” regulations would insure that the alt coins would not be allowed for illicit purposes, Investing.com analyst Clement Thibault said that the comments, “even though negative, also bring legitimacy to crypto and raises its profile”.
Thibault said that the remarks gave no indication that the U.S. is planning “any drastic steps” towards actual cryptocurrencies, unlike Libra.
“Bitcoin is enjoying another 15 minutes of fame, courtesy of the U.S government,” he said.
Thibault said that “any publicity is good publicity”, although he warned against any association of bitcoin with terrorist or national security due to the risk that governments could use that claim “to legitimize an otherwise illegitimate course of action”.
Tron Foundation founder Justin Sun, who bid $4.6 million to win a charity lunch auction with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, began to announce Monday his list of invites to the event.
Sun has promised to use the lunch, scheduled for this Thursday, as an opportunity to teach Buffett the value of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
The list of attendees made public so far include the creator of Litecoin Charlie Lee, chief executive officer of the Poloniex exchange Jeremy Allaire, Huobi Global chief Livio Wang, eToro CEO and co-founder Yoni Assia and the head of Binance Charity Foundation Helen Hai.