Traffic is so high that popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which has already paused trading at least twice, said that it might be offline temporarily again because of the high traffic.
The week has had its share of bad news as a South Korean exchange was forced to file for bankruptcy after a second hack within the space of a few months. Coinbase suspended trading in bitcoin cash and is investigating if there was any insider trading as some observers have suggested.
Bitcoin’s incredible history of rises and falls in price
Wikipedia has an an entry in the history of bitcoin that traces its price rises and falls. The most recent record rise and fall is really nothing new for bitcoin.
From its inception in 2009 to March of 2010 bitcoin was worth virtually nothing.
In March 2010 a user tried to auction off 10,000 bitcoins (BTC) for 50 dollars but there were no buyers.
On the 17th of March 2010 the now defunct BitcoinMarket exchange started with bitcoin trading at .003 to the US dollar.
On the 22nd of May the same year the first actual payment using bitcoin was transacted as two pizzas were bought in Jacksonville Florida. The price was 10,000 bitcoins. The value of a bitcoin was less than a cent.
The price made a huge leap between July 2010 when it was about 8 cents to July 8 2011 when it rose to $31.00. By December of the same year it dropped to a low of just $2.00.
On 11th of April 2013 bitcoin posted a high of $266 a coin. By June of the same year it dropped to $70.
Bitcoin breaches the $1,000 dollar mark
On November 29th 2013 bitcoin reached a high of $1242. After that, the price fell although its also rallied back twice to around a thousand.
As of January this year the price set a low of $750 before it rose again over a thousand.
BItcoin continually set records in 2017
In May of this year bitcoin broke through the $2000 mark.
By August the price had doubled to over $4,000. In September it passed $5,000.
By November 6th the price crashed through $7,000 but by the 15th of December it more than doubled again to over $17,900. But a week later on December 22nd it had fallen to 13,,800.
Present price of bitcoin
As of 3:52 December 24th UTC bitcoin was trading at $14,156.
The price at opening was $14,548 and the price had gone to a low of $13483.
Bulls and bears on bitcoin
Part of the reason for the recent rally was an expectation that more and more mainstream investors would begin trading bitcoin futures on the two major exchanges CBOE and Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
The resulting dizzying rise in the price of bitcoin has prompted warnings about investing in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Outgoing Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janey Yellen has noted the currencies are highly speculative. Jamie Dimon CEO of JP Morgan Chase has termed bitcoin fraud. There are many prominent nay sayers including Joseph Stiglitz the well-known economist. who said that bitcoin ought to be outlawed.
Even Charlie Lee, founder of litecoin, advises potential buyers to purchase the coin only if they are ready to lose all their money.
However, numerous others are still optimistic as is Shane Chanel, an adviser at the ASR Wealth Advisers in Australia who thinks that the cryptocurrency craze is just starting. Chanel said that the emphasis would shift to other cryptocurrencies than bitcoin but: “I feel the cryptocurrency madness is only beginning.”
