USA officials are warning against careless investment in marijuana, binary options and digital currency.

 Colorado Securities Commissioner Gerald Rome has issued an advisory bewaring investors of dealing with these three fields. Washington state Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) in its release also suggests considering them with care.

On the one hand, the three products seem to have little in common. But, according to Gerald Rome, “what they all have in common is their recent emergence as three investments that both sellers and buyers hope will become the ‘next big thing’.” And all three are highly unreliable.

Marijuana investment is risky because of the discrepancy of marijuana-related legislation in different states, that makes it “semi-legitimate”, DFI says. Binary options look rather like “online gambling”, says Rome, because the investor either loses all the money, or gets a fixed “prize”, depending on whether or not they guessed correctly.

And digital currency, including bitcoin, is also susceptible to fraud, because “different countries and jurisdictions have little uniformity on how bitcoin and digital currency is regulated,” and this suggests various ways of deceiving investors, Rome says. Besides, cyber attacks are another danger that bitcoin investors should be aware of, warns DFI.

Last week the price of bitcoin reached its maximum and hit the point of $500, which stimulated the growth of interest to the digital currency. Now the price has returned to below $350. These dramatic changes show that, indeed, bitcoin is a risky investment.

Alexander Tankhilevich