Bitcoin pulls back further from $17,000; Ether tokens hold near $1,200

Bitcoin futures settled sharply lower on Monday as the No. 1 digital currency backed away from the $17,000 level it reached over the weekend, amid a broad downturn in virtual assets sparked by news of heightened regulation in Asia.

On Monday, the bitcoin spot price BTCUSD, +2.31% BTCUSD, +2.31% was down 5.6% at $15,267.08, having hit around $17,000 on Sunday, according to CoinDesk.

Bitcoin futures for January BTCF8, +1.74% on the CME settled at $14,905, off $1,685, a more than 10% drop from Friday’s settlement. On the Cboe, futures XBTF8, +2.14% ended down $1,835, or 11%, at $14,940.
Meanwhile, Ether coins on the Ethereum blockchain tapped a new all-time of $1,266.93 on Monday. It has since backed off to trade up 2.5% at $1,177, according to CoinDesk. Ether coins crossed a key psychological threshold above $1,000 for the first time ever last Thursday. Ether’s market cap of $113 billion is second only to Bitcoin’s $258 billion, according to CoinMarketcap.com.
The price of another cryptocurrency, Ripple coins, which surged 150% at one point last week, also continued to pull back. A single coin was changing hands at $2.47, a drop of 21% Monday.

South Korea, a region that is one of the more active in crypto-asset investing, has seen local regulators in recent days step up scrutiny of investing in virtual currencies, like bitcoin. CoinMarketCap.com delisted Korean exchanges from its aggregate exchange platform, which industry participants attributed to the broad selling in the crypto market.