The price of bitcoin reached the milestone value of US$5,000 per BTC on Friday night, September 1, briefly touching tops between $5,013 and $5,149 on Asian exchanges. Bitcoin has had an outstanding run in 2017, climbing over 700% over the past eight months.
The decentralized currency Bitcoin has rallied hard this year, climbing from $1,000 per BTC on January 1st to $5,000 per BTC on the first of September. The digital asset had a substantial market capitalization of approx. $82.6B with only 16.5 million bitcoins currently in circulation. Further, bitcoin trade volume has been quite significant as the currency is trading over $2.6B every 24-hour period over the past week. All of this adds up to positioning bitcoin as the top performing currency in the whole world. So far in 2017 bitcoin has outperformed all government issued tender and a vast majority of stocks and commodities — Everyone’s favorite magical internet money beat them all.
With a spectacular spike in price everyone across the globe is beginning to notice bitcoin as mainstream media is blasting news about the price every couple of days. This includes well known financial publications like Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Wall Street Journal, and Barron’s telling everyday investors how well bitcoin has done this year. These mainstream articles are calling bitcoin the best investment since Apple or Amazon and referring to the currency as “digital gold.” Bitcoin’s 2017 rise in value has exceeded many expectations, including surpassing Goldman Sach’s prediction of BTC reaching a top at $2800 and dipping hard shortly after.
The rise has been so fast that people have said bitcoin is in a bubble that is expected to pop at anytime. If the cryptocurrency is in a bubble, it’s like no other, as Bloomberg reports out of all the infamous bubbles that have taken place in history bitcoin outshines them all.
“Bitcoin’s epic rise leaves the late-90s tech bubble in the dust,” explains the publication.
- With bitcoin’s rise many other digital currencies have also jumped in value immensely as the entire cryptocurrency landscape is worth over $180B. Hundreds of these blockchain based tokens are brought to life by bitcoin’s innovative tech flow, in and out of the BTC economy every day. At the time of writing, traders are exchanging over $8.6B worth of bitcoin and altcoins as heavy trade volume doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Further every digital currency below bitcoin in the top ten market capitalization list has a valuation of $1B plus or more. It’s safe to say bitcoin has produced a multi-layered economic black swan event like no other and it’s just getting started.
Cryptocurrency proponents also saw the first high profile bitcoin blockchain split in its history. On August 1 Bitcoiners witnessed the birth of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and anyone who held bitcoin prior to the fork received the token on a 1:1 basis. One BCH was worth roughly $620 at press time, which means the worth of both tokens would be $5620.
Surpassing $5K is quite a milestone and no one knows what’s going to happen in the future. With bitcoin’s value being so high many are predicting even higher tops in the $10-50K range in just a few years. Speculation aside, the past eight months of growth in bitcoin’s life with both mainstream adoption and value has been utterly phenomenal.