BITCOIN BRAINS

BITCOIN falls almost 20% from recent peak.

Tokyo : Bitcoin fell more than 10% yesterday to a one-week low of US$15,800 at cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp, losing almost one, fifth of its value. from a peak hit just three days ago.

The digital currency has been sliding since it reached a record high of US$ 19,666 on Sunday when the exchange giant CME Group launched bitcoin futures, one week after its riva-

 Cboe Global Markets listed the world's first  bitcoin futures.

''The listing of the bitcoin futures makes it easier for institutional players to trade bitcoins. Futures also enables players to go short on bitcoins, which was difficult without liquid futures,'' said Makoto Sakuma, researcher at  NLI Research Institute in Tokyo.

Singapore's central bank on Tuesday issued a warning against investment in cryptocurrencies, saying it considers a recent surge in their prices to be driven by speculation and that the risk of sharp fall in prices is high.

South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service said that on Tuesday that does not consider  bitcoin and  other cryptocurrencies  to be currencies of any kind.

Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday   that bitcoin had not been proven as a credible currency.

However, for Japanese retail investors who are estimated to account for 30% to 50%  of bitcoin trade worldwide, a more worrying may have come from a Japanese trader guru known as Cis.

The individual trader, who claims to own Yen21 billion in assets, tweeted over the last 24 hours that he had sold cryptocurrencies.

Many financial professionals have said bitcoin, which now has a market capitalisation of about US$ 275 billion, slightly bigger than Visa Inc, is a typical bubble, given how small the  actual number of transactions are.

The market is highly inefficient with  bitcoin futures  trading much above cashbitcoins, while the gaps of price quotes between various exchanges are also very large, they say.