Investing.com - Major cryptocurrencies stayed largely unchanged as the week opened in Asia, with just slight price fluctuations seen.
Bitcoin gained 0.19% to $3,930.3 by 10:24 PM ET (03:24 AM GMT). The coin is edging up to test the $4,000 level after recovering from a drop to around $3,700 last week.
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XRP traded 0.10% higher to $0.31367.
Ethereum ticked down 0.53% to $136.07 and Litecoin slid 0.23% to 57.089 over the last 24 hours. With that said, Litecoin was the biggest gainer over the past seven days, surging 20.71%.
The crypto market cap continued to increase, rising to $135 billion for a gain of around $4 billion from the start of the month.
Over the weekend, traders all noted that Fidelity Digital Asset Services, a crypto arm for financial services giant Fidelity, went live. It became the most notable news in the crypto space Monday morning.
“We are live with a select group of eligible clients and will continue rolling out slowly. Our solutions are focused on the needs of hedge funds, family offices, pensions, endowments, other institutional investors,” the firm wrote in a tweet last Friday.
These clients may now access the firm’s Bitcoin custody services. Fidelity Digital Asset will also execute trades on multiple exchanges for them.
Tom Jessop, head of Fidelity Digital Assets, told CNBC that the crypto prices “haven’t had an impact” on getting the firm up and running.
He added that institutional interest in cryptocurrencies was still high despite the bearish crypto market.
"If anything, they are as encouraged now as they were when prices were higher,” he said.
In other news, Brazil-based crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin won a case against Banco Santander (MC:SAN), which was ordered by a Brazilian court to return $350,000 to the exchange.
The bank reportedly closed the exchange’s account and froze its funds, saying its activities were incompatible with its policies. But the judge who oversaw the proceedings said even though crypto trading is a risky activity, the Central Bank of Brazil has not prohibited the “buying/selling of digital assets within the nation’s borders”.
According to the ruling, the bank should return the funds plus interest of 1% per month. It should also bear the legal expenses of the exchange and legal fees fixed at 10% of the value of the conviction.
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