Cryptocurrency prices went south on Monday after Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) announced that it may conduct on-site inspections of domestic cryptocurrency exchanges in response to Coincheck’s $530 million hack. The Bitcoin price led the retreat with a five percent decline, and most other top-tier coins followed suit. As a rule, Japan has been very welcoming to the nascent cryptocurrency industry, and favorable regulatory policies have enabled the country to become one of the ecosystem’s central hubs. Source: CoinMarketCapConsequently, the prospect that Japanese regulators may take a harder stance against cryptocurrency exchanges could be a contributing factor to today’s moderate decline, which reduced the cryptocurrency market cap to $565 billion. Bitcoin Price Fails to Hold Above $12,000Prior to the downturn, the market had been trading up on the news that stock trading app Robinhood plans to launch commission-free cryptocurrency trading in February for a limited number of customers — a move that will likely present brokerage giant Coinbase with its first legitimate competitor and bring new investors into the marketplace. Bitcoin Price ChartOn Sunday, the Bitcoin price peaked at $12,190, but it failed to hold above the $12,000 mark and sunk even lower on Monday morning. At present, the Bitcoin price is trading at $11,262 on Bitfinex, which represents a 24-hour decline of five percent and provides the most prominent cryptocurrency with a $189 billion market cap. Ethereum Price Cools OffThe Ethereum price followed a similar trajectory, declining four percent to $1,181 following a significant weekend rally that had lifted it as high as $1,260. Ethereum now has a valuation of $115.3 billion, providing the second-largest cryptocurrency with a 20 percent share of the total cryptocurrency market cap. NEO Makes Tepid Advance Despite Rocky MarketAltcoin prices generally tracked the market index on Monday, but two top-tier cryptocurrencies managed to post relatively strong performances. The first of these was Ripple’s XRP token, whose price declined one percent to $1.26. Despite this pullback, XRP posted the second-best performance among top-10 cryptocurrencies and outperformed the market by three percentage points. Fourth-ranked Bitcoin Cash was not so lucky, as its price declined five percent to $1,653. Cardano’s seven percent decline was worst among top 10-cryptocurrencies, but EOS and Stellar did not perform much better. NEO, ranked eighth, was the lone top 10-cryptocurrency to post a single-day advance. The NEO price increased by four percent to just under $155, providing the token with a $10.1 billion market cap. Litecoin’s five percent decline forced it down to ninth in the market cap rankings, and NEM — still languishing after $530 million worth of tokens were stolen in the Coincheck hack — declined six percent to $0.95. Click here for a real-time Bitcoin price chart and here for the current cryptocurrency market cap