Crypto Today: Major cryptocurrencies trade in relatively tight ranges on Thursday

The subdued trading action surrounding the crypto space on Thursday led to an unusually low volatility. As of writing, Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization was up only around 1% against the USD with the BTC/USD pair trading at $11,400. In the meantime, Etherum continues to stay directionless a little above the $1K mark while Ripple is losing 1.9% at $1.33 according to the latest available data on coinmarketcap.com.

Earlier today, during an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canada's central bank governor Stephen Poloz argued that Bitcoin was not a currency. "I'm not really sure what they are. They are not assets really … I suppose they are securities technically … There is no intrinsic value for something like bitcoin so it's not really an asset one can analyze. It's just essentially speculative or gambling," Poloz further explained.

Another report published by The Guardian quoted the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller saying, “I tend to think of bitcoin as an experiment. It is an interesting experiment, but it’s not a permanent feature of our lives. We are over-emphasising bitcoin, we should expand it out to blockchain, which will have other applications.”

The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies on Thursday stayed relatively unchanged near $550 billion, reflecting the broad-based consolidation phase.