Bitcoin Gains; Google Bans Crypto Mining Extensions

Investing.com – Bitcoin prices gained on Wednesday, while reports that Google (NASDAQ:) banned cryptocurrency mining extensions caught some attention.

was trading at $7,324.4 by 10:43PM ET (02:43GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, up 3.8% over the previous 24 hours.

, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, jumped 5.3% at $402.62 on the Bitfinex exchange.

’s XRP token surged 7.3% to $0.53216 on the Poloniex exchange.

Meanwhile, also surged 9.4% to $130.80

Google has banned all mining programs from the Chrome Web Store, according to reports on Wednesday. Such mining programs harnessed the processing power of internet users to mine cryptocurrency without their consent and slow down their user devices, the reports said.

“90% of all extensions with mining scripts that developers have attempted to upload to Chrome Web Store have failed to comply,” Google said in a statement, adding that blockchain extensions with non-mining functions were still welcome and under no threat at this time.

“The key to maintaining a healthy extensions ecosystem is to keep the platform open and flexible… This is why we chose to defer banning extensions with cryptomining scripts until it became clear that the vast majority of mining extensions submitted for review failed to comply with our single purpose policy or were malicious,” James Wagner, Product Manager for Google’s extensions platform noted.

The news came after Google banned malicious cryptojacking apps and also all crypto and ICO-related advertisements earlier in the year, with Twitter and Snapchat following suit.

Elsewhere, Australia launched new crypto exchange regulations, as a government statement confirmed that all digital currency exchanges must now register with authorities and commit to various reporting and identity checking procedures. A six-month grace period would accompany the new regulations, according to the statement.

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