BITCOIN has seen a major price surge over the past seven days as the cryptocurrency’s price rocketed by 16 per cent in a week to bring its value above $8,000 (£5,600)
Last Sunday the digital money was worth just $9,947 (£6,984), however, after a week long boom, the value of Bitcoin has now risen to $8,116 (£5,698).The steep increase in price could represent the start of the online currency’s price recovery, after previously seeing a month of disappointing price decreases.On March 23, Bitcoin was worth $8,918 (£6,261) before its worth dropped to a low of $6,620 (£4,648) by April 6.While the rise in the value of Bitcoin over the past month may signal a return to riches for the online money, Bitcoin has had false starts before.
Cryptocurrencies have been characterised by large fluctuations in price due to a lack of regulation.Since Bitcoin was first mined in 2009, the virtual money has seen its value rocket and it reached an all time high of more than $17,000 (£12,000) in December 2017.However, following the turn of the year, the digital currency’s value took a dramatic fall.It is believed cryptocurrencies saw their initial major drop in value following fears of the introduction of regulation.
South Korea introduced a raft of measures in January aimed at regulating Bitcoin and similar currencies such as Ripple and Ethereum.Meanwhile, India and Japan also indicated a crackdown on digital currencies.Cryptocurrency expert Thomas Lee, co-founder and Head of Research at Fundstrat, has predicted that despite Bitcoin’s struggles in 2018 by the end of the year the commodity could be worth as mochas $25,000 (£17,550).
He said: “We still feel pretty confident that bitcoin is a great risk-reward and we think it could reach $25,000 by the end of the year.”Mr Lee believes it is now time for a long-term recovery in the price of Bitcoin.He said: “It's overdue. Bitcoin was incredibly oversold.“When you look at metrics like price-to-book, which is 'money cost,' or our bitcoin misery index, it's pretty much what you saw at the end of the 2014 bear market, not the start.”