Yahoo Finance Bitcoin Prices Fall; Two-thirds of Crypto Exchanges Not KYC Compliant, Study Finds
Investing.com – Bitcoin prices fell on Friday, while Ethereum and Ripple were also down more than 2%. Meanwhile, a recent study found that two-thirds of cryptocurrency exchanges were not fully KYC compliant.
Bitcoin was trading at $7,637.8 by 12:40AM ET (04:40 GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 1.1% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, lost 2.1% at $600.7 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token was down 1.5% higher to $0.66799 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin traded 2.2% lower to $119.79.
A study that looked into 25 cryptocurrency exchanges across Europe and the U.S. revealed that more than two-thirds of cryptocurrency exchange fail to comply with proper Know-Your-Customer (KYC) procedure.
The study, conducted by the analytics house P.A.ID Strategies, showed that 68% of exchanges allow users to trade without having to provide any official identification. In fact, they could start trading by giving up only their telephone number and email address.
Elsewhere, a separate report this week suggested roughly $1.1 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in the first half of 2018.
"It's surprising just how easy it is without any tech skill to commit cybercrimes like ransomware," Carbon Black Security strategist Rick McElroy said in an interview with CNBC. "It's not always these large nefarious groups, it's in anybody's hands."
Exchanges made up 27% of attacks this year, according to the reports. $530 million worth of cryptocurrency NEM were stolen from Japan-based exchange Coincheck in January. In December, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Youbit lost 17% of its digital assets.
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