Bitcoin’s value has jumped to a record high, following a month of turmoil.
The price of Bitcoin is hovering at a record high on Monday, following a surge over the weekend. 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.
This means Bitcoin is now worth nearly 3 times more than an ounce of gold.
Bitcoin has never crossed the $3,000 mark until the weekend. The market value of all bitcoins in existence has now surpassed $56bn. The surge followed the creation of a spin-off crypto-currency, Bitcoin Cash, last week.
The value of bitcoin soared to a record high following a split in the cryptocurrency earlier in the week.
The cryptocurrency’s exchange rate jumped 16 percent to $3,292.41, reported Bloomberg. At the same time, the price of its new counterpart, Bitcoin Cash, plummeted 62 percent to $274.
The split that spawned Bitcoin Cash followed a feud over the best way to upgrade the cryptocurrency’s underlying technology, which has slowed with bitcoin’s growing popularity.
The price increases come at a time when optimism is beginning to return to markets following a bitcoin hard fork in which a new cryptocurrency was created without disrupting the larger bitcoin network. Over this time,
Over the last few months, bitcoin has received wide media coverage, attracting new buyers.
“The miner-orchestrated hard fork has had limited traction and will not impact the price or future development of bitcoin,” said Aurelien Menant, chief executive officer of Gatecoin Ltd., a cryptocurrency exchange in Hong Kong, referring to the split. “The activation of SegWit is a significant milestone in bitcoin’s technological evolution.”
