Had almost touched the value of US $ 20 thousand or about Rp 278 million per coin at the end of last year, now bitcoin prices dropped to US $ 6,716 or equivalent to Rp 93.35 million per coin. Futures contracts to problems such as system hacking are thought to be the cause.
Since the end of last year, two world-wide bourses of CME and CBOE Futures Exchange traded the bitcoin virtual currency (cryptocurrency) in the form of futures contracts. According to the founder of investment research firm, Fundstrat Global Thomas Lee, bitcoin futures contracts have been one of the causes of falling prices.
Futures contracts, he said, make bitcoin vulnerable to manipulation. The reason, many investors involved in the auction have relatively low liquidity. As a result, every investor has the potential to manipulate prices by selling or buying large amounts of bitcoin during the auction.
"It causes prices to fall and (they can) leave futures contracts with huge profits," he said as quoted by Business Insider on Monday (18/6) yesterday.
While GFI Group Macro Strategy Chief John Spallanzani is worried about low trading volumes on the Gemini exchange making bitcoin prices vulnerable to manipulation. "The lower the volume, the easier it is to manipulate, because (bitcoin) is not set," he said.
Because of this concern, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is involved in the US Department of Justice's (U.S.) investigation of allegations of bitcoin market manipulation.
The Coinmarketcap data shows bitcoin prices of US $ 17,131 or approximately Rp 238 million per coin on January 7, 2018. The price continues to fluctuate to US $ 7,683 or equivalent to Rp 106.8 million per coin on June 3, 2018.
Then, after the cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, the Coinrail was hacked, the bitcoin price dropped again to US $ 6,840 or around Rp 95.1 million on June 11, 2018. On the incident, about 30% of the coin-traded token coins vanished. Despite not disclosing its exact value, South Korean media Yonhap estimates the loss on the hack is around 40 billion won or about US $ 37.28 million.