Bitcoin Daily: Bitcoin Retreats Down To $52K; Nigeria’s SEC Director Upholds Crypto Ban, But Says It Has Disrupted The Market

The price of bitcoin fell this weekend, down as much as 19.5 percent from the record highs from the past week, CNBC writes.

Bitcoin was as low as $52,148 as of Sunday (April 18) morning.

That comes after the cryptocurrency rose to as much as $64,800 and beyond as of last Wednesday (April 14).

As of press time, bitcoin was trading at around $55,795.

Other cryptocurrencies, including ether and dogecoin, took hits as well over the weekend, with ether falling by as much as 18 percent, falling below $2,000 on Saturday. Ether had also hit new highs of $2,500 as of last Thursday (April 15).

And dogecoin, which was surging beyond 400 percent last week, hitting an all-time high of 45 cents, was dropping as low as 25 cents over the weekend.

It’s unclear what’s causing the drop, though the U.S. Treasury Department might be looking at cracking down on financial institutions for crypto-related money laundering.

Nigerian Director-general of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Lamido Yuguda has reaffirmed that the suspension of crypto asset investment guidelines the agency proposed last year is still going on, a report from The Guardian Nigeria says.

Yuguda, speaking before a recent press briefing for the meeting for the Capital Market Committee, said a recent Central Bank of Nigeria decision to close accounts from crypto exchanges to protect from abuse had “disrupted the market.”

He said the SEC’s suspension of the proposed guideline would be valid until the operators of the various crypto exchanges had access to their Nigerian bank accounts that had been previously closed.

Yuguda said the commission and the CBN were currently working together to ensure the best regulation of the market, and said the results would be made public.

In terms of creating new rules for the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), the new operating exchange post demutualisation of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Yuguda said the existing operating rules would stay in effect until new rules needed to be made.