Correction: Article has been updated to reflect that one-year high is based on BPI closing prices. The price of bitcoin has hit its highest closing price in the last year, trading at $436 and climbing at press time, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index .
Bitcoin has gained an astonishing $115 or 36% over the last four days. It was changing hands for $320 a coin on 8th December. The price briefly touched $500 on some exchanges on 4th November before dropping under $400 in the following days.
The strong rally is accompanied by record-breaking trading volumes on bitcoin exchanges. On 5th December 3.49 million bitcoins were traded across all exchanges tracked by data provider Bitcoinity. This smashed the previous record for daily traded volume established just days prior, on 26th November, of 2.86 million coins traded.
Trading volume has remained robust since its high watermark, with daily trading consistently closing above the 2 million BTC level. Falling Yuan
Dec 11 – Volume Chart Bitcoinitypm Market-watchers offered theories ranging from the falling price of the yuan, to the media hoopla around a supposed unmasking of Satoshi Nakamoto by two prominent technology publications, to an abundance of positive newsflow around the blocksize debate.
Daniel Masters, who runs the Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment fund that is widely known as GABI, said a weaker yuan was driving Chinese investors into bitcoin. The yuan has fallen 4% against the US dollar this year. He told CoinDesk: "It’s pretty simple in my view … A domestic Chinese investor is faced with falling yuan, falling commodity prices and falling real estate prices. One of the few alternatives is bitcoin, which is negatively correlated to all of this." Indeed, the exchanges with the most volume traded were the ones based in the mainland, with OKCoin and Huobi leading the […]
