The price of the digital currency Bitcoin has exceeded $ 200 again, triggering fears of a possible sharp price correction if the development turns out to be a speculative bubble. A Bitcoin (BTC) gained 70 dollars in value in the last two weeks alone and is currently trading at around 210 dollars on the Mt. Gox exchange.
Bitcoin Information on Trading Blog
This brings back memories of an earlier wave of speculation in April that saw the Bitcoin price hit over $ 265. However, the infrastructure of the then largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, could not cope with the increased trading volume, which investors perceived at the time as DDoS attacks on the exchange. The soaring was followed by a drop to around $ 150 per Bitcoin, and the price has remained below $ 200 since then.
A price slide also caused the FBI to shut down the drug trafficking platform “Silk Road” earlier this month, where investigators confiscated multi-million dollar bitcoins. In response to this news, the value of a Bitcoin fell by around 15 percent.
The course should recover quickly, however, and the Silk Road closure may even be good reasons for it. “If the decline of Silk Road did anything, it was in favor of Bitcoin,” says Emily Spaven of the Bitcoin news site CoinDesk. “Now that the platform no longer exists, people will hopefully begin to see Bitcoin in a more positive light and appreciate its numerous benefits.”
In addition to a slightly less black market image, the willingness of the Chinese internet company Baidu to accept Bitcoins as a means of payment was probably decisive for the current price increase. Baidu enjoys a similar reputation in China as Google and thus gives Bitcoin considerably more legitimacy. The little-known Chinese Bitcoin exchange BTC China doubled its number of users in response to this message.
Today, BTC China handles almost 33 percent of the Bitcoin trading volume. It is way ahead of Mt. Gox, which was considered the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, but is now only 23 percent of the volume. With 25 percent, the Slovenian exchange BitStamp has now also overtaken Mt. Gox, Trading Blog
Euphoric statements were also made at a Bitcoin conference in Cologne. A founding member of the still young federal association Bitcoin attributed the increasing interest in Bitcoins to the fact that something was “wrong with our financial system”. “We have already seen in other areas that the lowering of transaction costs through Internet technology has promoted growth and prosperity,” said Achim Himmelreich from the Federal Association of the Digital Economy (BVDW). “Bitcoins do just that, they lower transaction costs. They have already changed the world a bit. “
