Bitcoin tops $3400 as investor confidence boosts it to record high
Bitcoin’s value has jumped to a record high, following a month of turmoil.
Bitcoin is now worth nearly three times as much as the more traditional store of value. This means Bitcoin is now worth nearly 3 times more than an ounce of gold.
The price of bitcoin reached a new high above $3,400 during today’s session, a figure that was more than $2,000 above the price of gold. At press time, the precious metal was trading for $1,257 according to a spot exchange rate provided by Bloomberg.
The digital exchange rate jumped as much as 16 percent from Friday to an unprecedented $3,292.41, even after bitcoin’s division last week. The debate has revolved around how to upgrade its underlying technology, with a group of developers backing a solution called SegWit2x against miners — some of whom have created an offshoot called Bitcoin Cash — who want to increase the size of data blocks more drastically.
Bitcoin has never crossed the $3,000 mark until the weekend. The market value of all bitcoins in existence has now surpassed $56 billion.
The surge followed the creation of a spin-off crypto-currency, Bitcoin Cash, last week. The new asset is trading well below the peak price of $727.54 (£557) per coin it attained on 2 August.
Bitcoin Cash’s future appear to be more assured after Coinbase, one of the leading exchange and wallet services, promised to support it after previously refusing to give such a commitment.
“We are planning to have support for Bitcoin Cash by 1 January 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time,” it announced on its blog.