Bitcoin heading for biggest monthly decline since January 2015

Bitcoin is headed for its worst monthly decline since January 2015 after a horror start to the new year.

This morning bitcoin was trading around US$10,015 ($13,595), according to CoinDesk, a near 25 per cent decline from its January 1 trading price of US$13,412.

So far, this is the biggest monthly decline of the cryptocurrency since it fell 30.9 per cent in January 2015, according to CNBC.

Well over US$60 billion has been wiped off the value of bitcoin so far this month, according to analysis of data from Coinmarketcap.com.

Bitcoin has come under increasing scrutiny from regulators lately - including South Korea who brought in new rules to regulate cryptocurrency trading.

Meanwhile, Facebook said Tuesday that it was banning ads that promote cryptocurrencies in an attempt to stop the promotion of "financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices."

Bitcoin, like all cryptocurrencies is vulnerable to cyber theft. In early December, hackers stole more than US$70m worth of bitcoin from NiceHash, a marketplace for generating virtual currencies through complex mathematical calculations.

According to CNBC, January is typically a bad month for bitcoin. The cryptocurrency has fallen in four out of five Januarys in the period between 2013 and 2017.

Last year bitcoin gripped the investing world when it reached a staggering trading price of US$19,783 on December 17 - more than 18 times the value of its trading price of US$973 on the first day of 2017.