Bitcoin Price Holds Above $10,000 But Markets Remain Firmly in the Red

The cryptocurrency markets extended their decline for another consecutive day on Wednesday, as just five of the 100 largest coins and tokens managed to post an advance against the dollar. The Bitcoin price, meanwhile, recovered past $10,000 after yesterday’s report that US regulators had subpoenaed Bitfinex and Tether briefly caused it to dip into four-figure territory.

bitcoin price
Source: CoinMarketCap

Altogether, the cryptocurrency market cap shed $37 billion and is now valued at $514 billion following the day’s seven percent decline.

Bitcoin Price Recovers Past $10,000
As CCN reported, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued subpoenas to Bitfinex, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, and Tether, a startup that created the dollar-pegged USDT token. The subpoenas were issued in December, but early reports stated that they had been sent last week.

These early reports caused widespread panic — largely because Tether has yet to publish an audit demonstrating all of its tokens are backed by actual dollars — and in their wake, the Bitcoin price careened down as far as $9,760.

bitcoin price
Bitcoin Price Chart
News that the probe had actually begun in December restored a bit of stability to the markets because — the argument goes — the CFTC would have likely have taken swift action against the firms if their operations were as shady as their loudest critics have alleged. However, others, including lawyer Stephen D. Palley, said that it was not necessarily a positive sign.

In any case, the Bitcoin price recovered above $10,000 following the revised report and is currently trading at $10,341 on Bitfinex, which works out to a 24-hour decline of six percent. Bitcoin now has a $174.3 billion market cap.