Bitcoin Currency Soars Past $1,800 Mark
A single unit of Bitcoin is now worth more than $1,800. The cryptocurrency has just risen past the $1,800 mark on Thursday, May 11, which is a $100 increase in just two days. This new rally looks to be driven mostly by encouraging notes from policy makers and a generally positive outlook on the future of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is trading for $1,824 on Thursday morning, as reflected by the Coindesk Bitcoin price index. This new rally comes on the heels of the news that the cryptocurrency went past $1,700 for the first time on Tuesday, according to CNBC. This surge marks a $100 hike in just two days, as $3 billion has been added to the market cap of Bitcoin in the short span of four days.
With this new trend, the price of Bitcoin has skyrocketed by 81 percent since the start of this year, 2017. Analysts are very much interested in the circumstances that have encouraged this increase, and whether there are signs of an impending cryptocurrency bubble starting.
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A comment from Neel Kashkari, Bank President for the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, has been the latest in a string of positive forces for Bitcoin. Kaskari talked about the positive potential of the Blockchain technology that provides the base for Bitcoin, according to Reuters.
Kashkari spoke before the delegates of a technology conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "I would say I think conventional wisdom now is that Blockchain and the underlying technology is probably more interesting and has more potential than maybe Bitcoin does by itself," Kashkari noted.
This unprecedented rise in the value of Bitcoin, along with some other similar currencies, has traders speculating if the cryptocurrency market is heading into, if not already in, a market bubble. Jacob Eliosoff, a trader running a cryptocurrency fund, pointed out that various cryptocurrencies have appreciated even if they haven't made a technical or business breakthrough.
"I've been making the bubble argument for weeks. Doge, Dash, Litecoin, Stellar, Gnosis ... practically every coin has surged." Eliosoff said.
