Bitcoin passes $6,000 to give respite to investors

This weekend’s rise marks a pause from the jarring decline through most of 2018

The weekend is offering some respite for Bitcoin investors. The bellwether of the cryptocurrency world rose 8 per cent to $6,370.26 (Dh23,378) as of 8:10am in New York yesterday, according to Coinbase prices. The gain, which comes after the digital asset crashed through the $6,000 threshold last week for the first time since February, means the token has still lost about twothirds of its value since reaching a record high of nearly $20,000 in December.

This weekend’s rise marks a pause from the jarring decline through most of 2018. It follows the increase of more than 1,400 per cent last year as Bitcoin exploded onto the mainstream. The peer-topeer currency developed after the 2008 global financial crisis traded at as little as 30 cents at the end of 2010.

While it’s difficult to identify specific catalysts for Bitcoin’s decline, the bursting of a speculative bubble may be at the heart of the matter as questions about the long-term viability of the virtual currency and price manipulation abound.

Bitcoin was “very much” a bubble, Robert Shiller, the Nobel laureate economist whose warnings about dot-com mania proved prescient, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Tom Keene on June 26. Last year’s surge was “not a rational response.”

The peer-topeer currency developed after the 2008 global financial crisis traded at as little as 30 cents at the end of 2010.