Bitcoin hit an all-time high on Saturday and reached $4,200 early Sunday before slightly paring those gains to trade near $4,000. The digital currency has now quadrupled since January 2017, and is up about 40% in August alone. Bitcoin’s market value is now sitting at around $64 billion, up about $10 billion in the last week.
The value of cryptocurrencies overall has gained $11 billion in market cap in just the past two days, according to Coinmarketcap.com, topping out Sunday at a record $137 billion. Bitcoin’s share of that is more than $66 billion, another record.
Asian investors were responsible for much of Bitcoin’s weekend gains, as investors sought safe havens as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea heat up. The Japanese yen was behind about 46% of Sunday’s global bitcoin trading volume. South Korea and China each made up about 12% of global volume.
Bitcoin’s weekend gains came at the expense of its rival digital currencies. Ethereum’s ether was down nearly 5% to $295 on Sunday, while Ripple declined almost 4% and Bitcoin Cash slipped 4.3%.
Experts seem to remain optimistic about Bitcoin’s potential, yet some are starting to fear that it has entered a bubble. Still, the trend seems to be in favor of its continued success. No one knows for certain what the future of Bitcoin will be.
The bigger picture here though, is blockchain. While this technology is most closely associated with cryptocurrency at the moment, that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of its possibilities.
This article was first posted on Etoro.com/blog : Our Premium Trading Partner.
