Reasons Bitcoin is Dropping in Value - March 2018

The reasons for the latest drop in the value of Bitcoin and Altcoins since December 2017 are a few.

-In December 2017, trading of Bitcoin futures was introduced. Although there was a bit of hype on the news and twitter, the price of Bitcoin started falling from all time highs of around $19,000 US dollars. It never recovered to that price since then, and now it is trading at about $9,000 US dollars.

I suspect that there were investors and traders that understand how futures trading works and they were skeptical about the outcome of the introduction of futures for Bitcoin.

-China has been banning ICOs (initial coin offerings) since mid 2017. Also, banning social media accounts of exchanges that operate in China can be perceived that the Chinese government is generally against crypto. So far, I am not aware of any good news coming from China in regards to cryptocurrencies. Note that most of Bitcoin mining comes from Chinese mining farms. I am thinking, how come they haven't banned mining there? Another good questions is. What would happen if China ceased all mining farms assets of the farms in the country and took control over Bitcoin mining?

-Japan is welcoming cryptocurrencies generally and the feeling that I get from all the news coming out is that the Government of Japan is open to discussion and ideas. Although they penalized four cryptocurrency exchanges and revoked the licenses of two trading platforms for poor security and failing to meet Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) policies, according to Yugi Nakamura on twitter. He is a Bloomberg tech reporter in Tokyo, as stated in his twitter profile description.

-In early March the biggest reason Bitcoin went from about $10,000 US dollars to a bit more that $8,000, was the massive sell off of bitcoin by the Mt. Gox trustee, and the controversial decision of the trustee to sell 40,000 bitcoin on a cryptocurrency exchange, rather than over-the-counter (OTC) platforms. According to the trustee, there is another $1.7 Billion US dollars worth if Bitcoin that might be sold off, but he will decide that after he speaks with his lawyers.

Here is a direct quote: “As a result of the consultation with the court, I considered it necessary and reasonable to sell a certain amount of BTC and BCC at this point and secure a certain amount of money for distribution resources, and thus, I sold the amount of BTC and BCC above. I made efforts to sell BTC and BCC at as high a price as possible in light of the market price of BTC and BCC at the timing of sale. I plan to consult with the court and determine further sale of BTC and BCC.”

-The Security and Exchange Commission in the US, has been aggressive with trying to influence the cryptocurrency world by talking regulation on ICOs and boasting the message that investors and retail traders especially need to be protected by ICO scams and cryptocurrency projects that they don't understand.