Currency conundrum: $10,000 in sight for bitcoin as it rockets to new high
LONDON: Bitcoin’s vertiginous ascent showed no signs of abating on Monday, with the cryptocurrency soaring to another record high just a few percent away from $10,000 after gaining more than a fifth in value over the past three days alone.
The digital currency has seen an eye-watering tenfold increase in its value since the start of the year and has more than doubled in value since the beginning of October, lifted by the prospect of crossing over into the financial mainstream, amid a flurry of crypto-hedge fund launches.
It surged as much as 4.5% on Monday to trade at $9,721 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange , before easing back to around $9,600.
Data compiled by Alistair Milne, the Monaco-based manager of the Altana Digital Currency Fund, showed US bitcoin wallet provider Coinbase added 300,000 users between Wednesday and Sunday, during the US Thanksgiving holiday. The total number of Coinbase users globally now stands at 13.3 million.
“Breaking $10,000 seems inevitable following the recent price action,” Milne said.
Bitcoin’s price has been helped in recent months by the announcement that the world’s biggest derivatives exchange operator CME Group would start offering bitcoin futures. The company said the futures would launch by the end of the year though no precise date had been set.
The latest price surge brought bitcoin’s “market cap” — its price multiplied by the number of coins that have been released into the system to more than $163 billion, according to industry website Coinmarketcap.
The market cap of all cryptocurrencies, meanwhile, topped $300 billion for the first time, the site said, making their estimated market value greater than that of Wal-Mart.