No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250. Bitcoin tumbled below $4,225 to a 13-month low, before regaining some ground.

The slide helped fuel a sell-off among rival tokens Ether, Litecoin and XRP,

which pared an earlier loss that reached 17 percent. After months of enjoying

relative stability, cryptocurrency bulls are left reeling by a sudden market

downturn in November and increased regulatory reviews. Digital assets have now

lost almost $700 billion of market value since crypto-mania peaked in January,

according to CoinMarketCap.com. Trading on futures markets, where investors

can bet against Bitcoin, has soared. While the trigger for the latest sell-off

is unclear, it has coincided with a " hard fork" of Bitcoin Cash. The move,

which split the offshoot of the original Bitcoin into two, has underscored the

sometimes chaotic nature of a crypto community racked by infighting. Bitcoin,

which began the year above $14,000, broke through its floor of around $6,000

last week. "If you significantly slice through a level like $6,000, people

don't have a lot of protection below it -- and then you see a lot of stop-loss

selling which exacerbates the move," said Marc Ostwald, global strategist at

ADM Investor Services International in London. "It doesn't help that we have a

genuinely risk-averse environment, with equities and credit under pressure."

Bitcoin, the biggest digital coin, was down 7.9 percent as of 7:12 a.m. in New

York. Ether, Litecoin and XRP all fell at least 8.8 percent. Regulatory

concerns have also weighed on sentiment. On Friday, the U.S. Securities and

Exchange Commission announced civil penalties against two cryptocurrency

companies that didn't register their initial coin offerings as securities. And

on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Justice Department is

investigating whether last year's epic rally was fueled in part by

manipulation, with traders driving up Bitcoin with Tether -- a popular but

controversial digital token. "The whole move by the SEC has seemed like a nail

in the coffin, and with talk about price-rigging the market, it's getting

nasty," said ADM's Ostwald. He said the approach of Bitcoin futures expiration

can also give gyrations to the market. The combined open interest in Bitcoin

futures on exchanges run by CME Group Inc. and Cboe Global Markets Inc.

swelled to the equivalent of 22,266 Bitcoins on Monday, an all-time high.

CME's current contract is set to finish trading in 10 days. Volume in the

contracts, which allow institutional investors to profit from declines in

cryptocurrencies, jumped to the highest level since July. DM