Prominent digital currencies such as bitcoin, ripple and Ethereum experienced a beating on Thursday after news of South Korea’s plans to ban trading in digital coins.
Bitcoin dropped about 6 percent at 7:25 a.m. London time, while the second largest digital coin, Ethereum, dropped more than 11 percent and ripple plunged by 9 percent compared to their price the previous day, based on data published by Coinmarketcap.com. Several of these digital currencies have bounced back from their losses later in the morning with ripple gaining about tenth of a percent at 8:10 a.m. London time.
According to South Korea’s Justice Ministry, Park Sang-ki, on Thursday, that the ministry is planning a bill to keep cryptocurrency trading out of South Korea.
At about 4:50 London Time, just a few minutes following the report, losses within the whole digital currency market were valued at more than $106 billion in comparison to the market capitalization when the day began on Thursday.
The drop in prices came after the movement of two prominent cryptocurrencies that reached record highs. On January 4, Ripple reached a record peak of $3.84. As of 8:00 a.m. London time on Thursday, the digital coin has dropped more than 50 percent since then.
South Korea is considered as one of the significant digital currency trading markets. Based on data from industry website Crypto Compare, the country trades digital coin for somewhere in the range of 6 to 12 percent of bitcoin trading. While Ethereum trades at a higher level at about 14 percent. Trading Ripple in South Korea can hit as high as 33 percent depending on the day.
As of now, South Korea’s government did not issued a detailed report on the possible new legislation.