Ripple erases weekly gains with 6% slump

Ripple sank nearly six percent, or $0.03 to below $0.45 on Friday away from June 22 highs, after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's Congressional testimony this week, at which he made sharp criticism of cryptocurrencies. 

As of 06:35 GMT, Ripple shed 5.83% to $0.44924 from the opening of $0.47691, which is the intraday high, with a low at $0.44535, with Ripple's market value now down to $45.3 billion. 

In his Congressional testimony earlier today, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned from cryptocurrencies and their use in money laundering, dismissing them as failing to hold real value, while asserting the Federal Reserve doesn't intend to launch its own cryptocurrency, even though it will monitor the market closely. 

Powell said cryptocurrencies won't be a problem, as their market is still too small to make an impact, while calling on lawmakers to pay attention and regulate the industry, in turn weighing on crypto assets today. 

 BlackRock to Invest in Crypto? 

BlackRock, the world's biggest assets manager, is reportedly looking into investment options in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. 

Financial News reported that BlackRock formed a team from various units at the company to look into cryptocurrencies, with an eye on investing in Bitcoin futures in particular. 

In other news, Bloomberg reported that Coinbase, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, got regulatory approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to list cryptocurrencies as security tokens under the supervision from federal regulators in a first for the company. 

It's worth mentioning that Ripple was first launched on March 7, 2015, to start trading at $0.015, with the virtual currency losing nearly two thirds of its value by early 2016 to $0.0059, before rising 5% during 2016 to $0.0063, and then skyrocketing 28,000% to $1.748 by the end of 2017, before marking unprecedented highs in January at $3.30, then losing 85% of value rapidly in the last few months, and closing the first half of the year below $0.5.