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NAGPUR, India (Reuters) -Like thousands of his countrymen in far-flung places, flower-shop owner Ashish Nagose has been learning about trading cryptocurrencies by attending classes every weekday for the past two months in his home city of Nagpur in western India. Nagose bought and sold stock options earlier but is now venturing into cryptocurrencies as regulators have made it harder to trade equity derivatives in India. The 28-year-old believes the red-hot crypto asset class can help shield his family-owned flower shop during downturns.

Blockware CEO Mason Jappa says Bitcoin mining is the best way to dollar-cost average into BTC, offering a hands-off approach for retail investors.

The cryptocurrency market, rocked by a high-profile hack Friday morning, continued to be in hangover mode as the work week started. On Monday, a vast number of digital coins and tokens continued to lose value, some even at double-digit percentage rates. Leading altcoin Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) -- the token at the center of the hack -- had fallen nearly 8% in value from 4 p.m. ET in late afternoon trading.

Robinhood said the SEC ended an investigation into its crypto unit in what appears to be another move by the Trump administration to undo an aggressive approach to that industry.

Bitcoin’s market cap stands at $1.87 trillion, while gold's market cap is approximately $19.9 trillion. For BTC to match gold, it would need to increase by around 965%, or 10.65x its current value.

The operator of the OKX cryptocurrency exchange pleaded guilty on Monday to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws and will pay nearly $505 million in fines and forfeited fees, the U.S. Department of Justice said. It entered its plea at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan, who imposed the sentence. OKX is the world's fourth-ranked cryptocurrency spot exchange based on traffic, liquidity, trading volumes, and confidence in the legitimacy of reported trading volumes, according to CoinMarketCap.

Trump’s stance on crypto has evolved, according to OKX Chief Marketing Officer Haider Rafique.