Are we close to a new crash? Bitcoin is now trading at under $11,000

After a horrible week, the cryptocurrency world was beginning to feel optimistic, after most coins recovered serious amounts in just a few days, especially Bitcoin. However, on Monday morning, the currencies started dropping again.

Around 11 a.m., ET, Bitcoin was trading as low as $10,234, while at this very moment its value is slightly higher, trading at $10,417. According to CNBC, this morning’s price marked a loss of around 24 percent over the last 24 hours.

All coins are ‘suffering’

But not just the world’s biggest cryptocurrency had a bad start this week. Ethereum also fell below the psychological limit of $1000, trading with 7.5% lower, at around $948. As for Ripple, the third currency by market cap, fell even more trading now at $1.19. And just to think that everything was starting to look very good again on Friday…

The prices were once again influenced by news from South Korea. To be more specific, a new set of details emerged about cryptocurrency regulation, as the government is trying to limit excessive speculation in the Asian country.

This Monday, the South Korean government declared that it’s planning to collect more than 24 percent of both corporate and local income taxes from the country’s cryptocurrency exchanges in 2018.

In their attempt to tax cryptocurrency transactions, the government is also considering to require exchanges to share users’ transaction data with banks.

Currently, 4 percent of the trading volume in South Korea is accounted by Bitcoin, while the Japanese Yen has the largest share, with about 37 percent, followed by the United States dollar, with 33 percent.

Is the idea of a ban still standing?

Last week, South Korean Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon said in a radio interview that “the shutdown of virtual currency exchanges is still one of the options” the government has. All the speculations come after, a few weeks ago, by the end of December, the country’s government announced that they are banning new trading accounts, while users will be required to use their real names for such operations.

Analysts expect that Bitcoin won’t go higher than $25,000 by the end of the year, but it’s hard to believe that this will happen, considering its excessive volatility from lately.