CRYPTO INSIDER: Bitcoin plunges amid fear of crackdown in South Korea

Photo by Adam Pretty/Getty Images

The price of bitcoin dipped below $14,000 Thursday morning amid fears that South Korea plans to shut exchanges. Across the board, the top cryptocurrencies were trading lower.

Ripple, which Wednesday announced a consortium with a number of Japanese credit card companies, was the lone coin in the green.

Here's the scoreboard as of Thursday afternoon:

• Bitcoin (BTC): $13,891 (-10.57%)
• Ethereum (ETH): $684 (-7.65%)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCC): $2,366 (-12.8%)
• Ripple (XRP): $1.25 (3.86%)
• Litecoin (LTC): $231 (-12.13%)

What's happening:

1. 'Heed these words of warning:' Ethereum founder threatens to leave if the crypto community doesn't grow up. The 23-year-old founder of Ethereum took to Twitter on Wednesday to lament the immaturity of communities across the cryptocurrency market.
2. Some of the biggest crypto exchanges are shutting out new users because they can't keep up with demand. Cryptocurrency exchanges are experiencing growing pains as the market for digital coins explodes. Now, at least three cryptocurrency exchanges - Bittrex, Bitfinex, and CEX.io - have stopped onboarding new users altogether.
3. Bitcoin is losing its dominance over the crypto market. Bitcoin had an incredible run in 2017, but in one respect the coin is worse off than it was at the beginning of the year. Its share of the cryptocurrency market has more than halved since January 2017.
4. The mysterious bitcoin tycoon who promised to give away an $86 million fortune just made another donation. A mysterious bitcoin tycoon with the alias PineappleFund made a million-dollar donation to the digital library nonprofit Internet Archive.

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