(Newswire.net — February 2, 2018) — Bitcoin dropped below the $10.000 line again in the last 24 hours. This is the third time in just two weeks that Bitcoin broke this psychologically significant line. Why did this happen? Well, the Indian government is to ban the use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, finance minister Arun Jaitley has announced, kicking Bitcoin’s already-sliding value further down the slope. He spoke on Thursday in his 2018 Budget speech and with the speech he contributed a 6.5% drop in Bitcoin’s value over the last 24 hours, leaving the most popular virtual coin at the $9,625 mark.
Don’t forget Bitcoin briefly neared $20,000 in early December, has had a dreadful time since then, partly thanks to regulatory moves against it in South Korea. Its slide made cryptocurrency investors $44.2 billion poorer in January alone.
Still, Bitcoin is an accepted payment method at many places worldwide and for sure this isn’t the end of it. For example, there is great number of Online Casinos that accept Bitcoin as a deposit method. There is a list of Best Bitcoin Casinos for those interested in it.
The story with Bitcoin is very similar to the gold rush that happened a few years back. In that period gold started to move very high in the stock market and it seemed it will never stop to rise. People got greedy, started to buy gold and lost great amounts of money at the end.
So this announcement from the Indian government is really significant for Bitcoin future. India’s government said it does not consider cryptocurrencies to be legal tender and will try to phase out payments using coins such as bitcoin. In a meeting yesterday, Mr. Jaitley renewed India’s commitment to ending the use of BTC and other cryptocurrencies in what he said was India’s continuing fight against money laundering and the funding of terrorism.
He said, quote: “The government does not recognize cryptocurrency as legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate the use of these crypto assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payments system”.
However, he did not rule out looking further into blockchain technology.
He said, quote: “The government will explore the use of blockchain technology proactively for ushering in the digital economy.”
So the winter is coming for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as few governments already started to realize that Bitcoin is really dangerous and it can be used for some criminal activities and money laundering. Can Bitcoin survive this?