bitcoin: As bitcoin trading shifts shape, big money stays away

LONDON: Bitcoin’s value has plunged by three-quarters this year, sending the original and biggest cryptocurrency back to levels not seen before its bubble. And price isn’t the only aspect of trading that has changed.

The retail investors behind bitcoin’s dizzying ascent to a record of nearly $20,000 last December have fled, leaving the early adopters and crypto-related firms that traditionally dominated digital coin trading driving exchange volumes.

And while bigger investors from proprietary traders to hedge funds are growing more active, mainstream financial firms have stayed away from cryptocurrencies, even as market infrastructure seen as key to their entry begins to be built.

The shifting shape of digital coin trading, depicted by industry data and interviews with exchanges and companies, suggests bitcoin is struggling to evolve from a speculative asset favoured by relatively niche investors to an investment choice in the same league as stocks or bonds.

Such an institutional…