A Bitcoin is Now Worth $10,000 USD

Bitcoin’s price has reached an all time high of  $10,000 USD per BTC across global exchanges. The decentralized currency has captured the five-digit price range just a few weeks before the end of 2018.

The milestone was hit on international exchanges earlier in the day (where prices are normally a few percent higher) and was just crossed on U.S exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini some hours ago.

This comes two days after bitcoin hit $9k, and eight days after it crossed $8k.

This $10,000 marks a bull rally essentially never before seen in modern financial markets. For perspective, bitcoin is now up 1,258% over the past year, with the cumulative value of all cryptocurrencies up 2,174% to a total of $316B. Bitcoin alone currently represents about 54% of this total market cap.

It caps a remarkable rise in value for the crypto-currency, which was trading below $1,000 at the start of the year.

However opinions are divided on the latest surge as some experts believe the asset still has far to soar, but others say it represents a speculative bubble with nothing tangible at its core that could burst any time.

Bitcoin first reached $1,000 in late-2013 and then dipped significantly before starting a volatile climb to its current value.

It is not entirely clear what has driven the sudden rise in value, especially because the past few weeks have been marked by action by some financial regulators to limit its use.

According to analysts, one factor that may have helped was the US-based derivatives marketplace operator CME Group’s announcement at the start of the month that it planned to launch a Bitcoin futures product before the end of 2017, which bolstered confidence in its prospects.

Another was a decision to drop a controversial plan known as Segwit2x.

This many believe would have altered the way Bitcoin’s underlying technology, the blockchain, worked, to help it handle more transactions.

But the move risked splitting the community.

Many industry watchers believe the rapid rise in value will not be sustained and expect its value to suddenly fall sharply.

Bitcoins were first produced in 2009 and took a long time to become an accepted holder of monetary value that could be swapped for real-world cash.

One early transaction involved using 10,000 bitcoins to buy two pizzas.

Interestingly, the boom has led to a general rise in many other virtual currencies. Ethereum for instance is now worth about $480, but at the start of 2017 each one was worth only about $10.

Many others are also trying to profit from the growing interest in crypto-currencies..

It is worth knowing that the total value of all the bitcoins in existence has now surpassed $167 making it worth more than many US companies such as Boeing and General Electric.