Bitcoin eases off record highs, hold above $4500

After refreshing its record high at $4644 on Tuesday, bitcoin erased some of its gains against the USD with the BTC/USD pair losing a little more than 1% on the day. As of writing, the pair was trading at $4562.

Today's retreat is considered to be the result of investors taking some profit off the table as no new fundamental catalysts around the cryptocurrency were present during the day. However, the increasing popularity of bitcoin seems to be bringing some problems with it. "In 2017, virtual currency transactions account for 0.0019 percent of the total complaints received by the CFPB. The CFPB is on pace to receive 425 complaints in 2017, up 5,971 percent from the seven complaints received in 2016," Jeff Gitlen, content marketing analyst at LendEDU, said in an article, as reported by the CNBC.

In the meantime, the anonymity of the bitcoin owners continues to raise questions about the potential uses of the currency. According to a recent article published in the Independent, "just last month two of the dark web’s largest markets "Alphabay" and "Hansa" were seized in a joint effort from European police, Interpol, the FBI and the DEA. The website’s users bought and sold drugs and chemicals from one another using Bitcoin to protect their identities."

Bitcoin may face these type of issues in the near future as its market cap and the number of users continues to rise.