Bitcoin price continues its recovery rally as a bullish spike on Friday’s trading pushed the cryptocurrency’s value above $16,000.
At press time, bitcoin is back above $16,000, the first time since the turn of the year, as investors continue to return to the cryptocurrency following a volatile month in December. After hitting an all-time high near $20,000 in mid-December, prices fell from $17,000 to $13,300 in a single day, losing over 20%. Two weeks ago to the day, a flash-crash sent prices tumbling even further toward $11,000 with investors presumably cashing out just ahead of Christmas.
In an ongoing recovery rally, bitcoin began trading just under $13,000 as the clock struck into 2018 before surfacing above $15,000 mid-week upon news of a substantial investment by prolific Silicon Valley billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund reportedly holding hundreds of millions of dollars in the world’s first cryptocurrency.
Today’s spike sees the cryptocurrency hit a new 2018 high of $16,242 (Bitfinex). At press time, bitcoin is trading to the dollar at $16,050.
Today’s upward gains have seen investors returning to the cryptocurrency, according to trading pairs’ data from CoinMarketCap. Of particular note is Binance’s TRX/BTC pair, with a trading volume of over $2.1 billion in a 24-hour period. TRON prices are down 9% on the hour after spiking nearly 100% on Thursday and 400% in the year’s first week. It’s a similar tale with Ripple and the XRP/BTC trading pair as Ripple price fell 9% over the last 24 hours after meteoric gains all through December into January. Ripple’s rise sees it become the second cryptocurrency after bitcoin to achieve a market cap of $100 billion, earlier this week.
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