Investing.com - Bitcoin may be a victim of its own success.
A new report by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco says the introduction of bitcoin futures trading in mid-December 2017 coincided with the beginning of the cryptocurrency's price decline from its record high of almost $20,000 and that it is "no coincidence."
The report says bitcoin futures allowed pessimists to enter a market that had previously been driven solely by one-sided speculative buying, and that the timing of the decline is "consistent with trading behavior that typically accompanies the introduction of futures markets for an asset."
Bitcoin's price peaked on December 17, the day the Chicago Mercantile Exchange joined the Chicago Board Options exchange in offering futures trading.
Bitcoin has staged a modest rebound in recent weeks, but remains far from its peak price.