Markets: Bitcoin, Ether fall; Litecoin leads decline across most top 10 crypto

Bitcoin and Ether fell in Asian trading on Thursday afternoon, with Litecoin seeing the steepest drop in declines across most top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies ranked by market capitalization.

Fast facts

• Bitcoin slipped 0.74 % over the past 24 hours to trade at US$16,439 at 4.30 p.m. in Hong Kong, and Ether declined 1.53% to US$1,181, according to CoinMarketCap.
• Litecoin fell the most among the top 10 cryptos, dropping 4.34% to US$74.92 and continuing to erode its gains since Tuesday.
• Polkadot decreased 2.76% to US$5.29. Polkadot on Thursday announced moves to help its ecosystem fight fraud with USDC as a reward.
• XRP rose 7.47% to US$0.41, with U.S.-based lawyer Bill Morgan on Wednesday saying that a settlement agreement between the SEC and Ripple looked “promising.”
• BNB inched up 0.29 % to US$295.53, gaining 9.2 % in the last seven days amid Thursday news of Binance launching a US$1 billion fund to support the crypto industry.
• The U.S. stock market was closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving. Asian stock markets were mixed, with the Shanghai Composite rising 0.4%, the Nikkei 225 dropping 0.35% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipping 0.56%.
• Hong Kong-listed Chinese tech giant Tencent’s stock fell 2.64% on the day. Prosus NV, a subsidiary of Tencent’s largest shareholder Naspers, had dumped 78.9 million Tencent shares and is considering selling US$4.6 billion of Meituan shares that it received from Tencent as a special dividend.