Bitcoin Falls Below $3700, as US Dollar Rises, Bitcoin Cash Forks

As the US Dollar rose abroad, and another approaching fork for Bitcoin remains, Bitcoin fell below $4000 for the first time in 15 months. The fork in Bitcoin Cash, which forked off from Bitcoin itself six months ago, appears to be frightening investors. This even though said fork does not affect Bitcoin directly.

Plus there is the increasing determination by governments to crack down on what they clearly see as a threat to their own power.

Beginning in 2018, there has been a large sell-off of cryptocurrencies. From January to February 2018, the price of Bitcoin fell 65 percent, and by the end of the first quarter of 2018, the entire cryptocurrency market fell by 54 percent, with losses in the market topping $500 billion. By September 2018, the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index had lost 80 percent of its value, making the decline of the cryptocurrency market larger than the bursting of the Dot-com bubble in 2002

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued four "Customer Advisories" for bitcoin and related investments. A July 2018 warning emphasized that trading in any cryptocurrency is often speculative, and there is a risk of theft from hacking, and fraud. A February 2018 advisory warned against investing an IRA fund into virtual currencies.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has also issued warnings. A May 2014 "Investor Alert" warned that investments involving bitcoin might have high rates of fraud, and that investors might be solicited on social media sites.An earlier "Investor Alert" warned about the use of bitcoin in Ponzi schemes.

The European Banking Authority issued a warning in 2013 focusing on the lack of regulation of bitcoin, the chance that exchanges would be hacked, the volatility of bitcoin's price, and general fraud.

The self-regulatory organization FINRA and the North American Securities Administrators Association have both issued investor alerts about bitcoin.