Photo: Finance Magnates The price of the digital currency Bitcoin have hit a two-year high, trading above $700 AUD on Monday morning after it spiked 21% over the weekend as traders raced in front of an event programmed to occur only once every four years called the ‘halving’, an adjustment to bitcoin’s protocol designed to reduce the supply of new bitcoins by half. Sam Lee, CEO, BCG “The halving reduces the amount of new Bitcoins available to be mined by exactly half to 12.5 down from 25 Bitcoins in a block which takes on average 10 minutes to produce.” says, Sam Lee, CEO of Bitcoin Group, Australia’s largest Bitcoin Mining company.
“Halving is currently estimated to happen in less than a month, this reduces the global supply of Bitcoins, and we are seeing as a result the price moving up because of this.”
“The impact of halving will be felt, but considering that Bitcoin’s value has quadrupled in value since a year ago, so even with the halving, the market opportunity of Bitcoin Mining is still double what it is since a year ago in USD terms.”
Most recently, it was trading at AU$952 (US$703), which is up over 300% from AU$315 (US$233) this time last year.
Any time you’re talking about bitcoin prices and the reasons for any move, it’s best to keep in mind that this is still a relatively thin market. The volume of bitcoin traded over the past 24 hours was about 400,000, worth about $277 million, according to CoinMarketCap. That’s large by cryptocurrency standards, but small by capital market standards; this is still a market that can be pushed by a small amount of trading. Don’t forget China, either. A lot of trading comes from China, where bitcoin is an enthusiastically speculative market. Lastly, the risk-off selling in […]
