Bitcoin prices reach all time high; $1600 dollar mark in sight
The price of bitcoin has been on a roll recently, continuously hitting new highs in the past few trading sessions.
It broke past the USD 1,500-mark in trade Thursday to make its next record high of USD 1,540, as per CoinDesk price index. “Bitcoin can be thought of as digital gold,” said Brian Kelly, founder of BKCM LLC and manager of a digital assets hedge fund. “The upside for bitcoin is so much higher than upside for gold, in my view.”
Gold futures for June delivery traded more than 1 percent lower to near $1,232 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The precious metal had topped $1,500 for about two years, even running above $1,800 at one point, but since early 2013 has not been able to recover back to the $1,500 level.
Adoption of Bitcoin in Japan; political events worldwide driving Bitcoin prices upwards
Many speculate that this rally, fueled by the US and Japan, could be due to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) plan to reexamine its decision to refuse the Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF.
As the chance of a hard fork seem to be fade and the community warms up to the idea of segwit instead of bitcoin unlimted, there is more clarity on how the technology will tackle the scalability issue which is infusing more confidence in the digital currency.
This has also reduced the volatility of bitcoin price fluctuation and as per the bitcoin volatility index, its 30-day volatility against the US dollar (measured by standard deviation of daily returns) has come down to 1.65 percent from levels of 16.11 percent back in 2011.
Increased interest from Japanese investors has also contributed to bitcoin’s gains. More than 10 Japanese companies are launching digital currency exchanges given increased legal recognition of the currencies and a scheduled elimination of a tax on digital currency purchases, the Nikkei Asian Review reported Tuesday. In India, where the government is yet to take a stand on crypto currencies 1 bitcoin curently can be bought for around 99,700 rupees.
