Cryptocurrency prices changed little on Monday as the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined a Bitcoin trader for running a cryptocurrency trading scam.

On the Bitfinex exchange, by 17:03 Moscow time, the Bitcoin rate increased by 0,94% to $6,472.20.

In general, the capitalization of cryptocurrencies has changed slightly. At the time of writing, the total capitalization of the foreign exchange market was $213 billion.

{{997650|Ethereum}} rose 0,50% to $213,08. At the time of writing, the Litecoin rate was down 0,31% to $51,446. The third largest digital currency by capitalization, XRP, rose in price by 1,69% and was trading at $0,51338.

Arizona-based trader Joseph Kim admitted to defrauding investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars after stealing more than $600,000 from his previous employer, a Chicago trading firm. Funds in Bitcoin and Litecoin were transferred to Joseph Kim’s personal account.

He told clients that he voluntarily quit his job to open his own trading company. He also promised that he would engage in low-risk transactions. However, in fact, he made risky transactions with cryptocurrencies, which led to the loss of all investor funds in the amount of $545 thousand.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Kim $1 million, permanently banned him from trading and sentenced him to 15 months in prison.

In other news, IBM (NYSE:IBM) has filed a patent for a blockchain platform to make it easier to work with scientific articles and research data.

According to the description in the patent application: “The first block will contain research data, and the second will contain analytical data – analysis of research data”.

Recently, many tech and financial companies have filed patents for technologies related to blockchain, Bitcoin and other digital currencies.