Like all currencies or assets, bitcoin's value is driven by the amount that individuals are prepared to pay for it. Whether that's the "right" valuation, and also whether bitcoin is really well worth that total or perhaps not, is mostly done to opinion.
JPMorgan employer Jamie Dimon recently labelled bitcoin a fraud, and also said its astronomic increase in value is a text book financial bubble much like the Dutch "tulip mania" of the 17th century, that saw speculators drive up the cost of just one bulb to 10 times the yearly wage of an experienced individual - before rapidly losing just about all of that value.
Speculation has fuelled bitcoin's fast ascent in recent months, Rauchs states, but there are already clues that the cryptocurrency is transferring from the fringes on the web to the mainstream. He points to much more than hundred hedge money specialising in cryptocurrencies which have started not too long ago, triggering today's price surge.
CME Group, which has the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in which trillions of money of derivatives contracts for global commodities are traded every year, now provides bitcoin futures. Some analysts say this's an indication that bigger financial players are prepared to enter the marketplace.
The amount of individuals utilizing the cryptocurrency has in addition risen from around 3 to 6 million in April, to between ten and twenty million folks at the conclusion of 2017, though specific figures are extremely hard to build, Rauchs says.
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