The bitcoin virtual currency rose strongly on Tuesday, approaching the record level of $ 10,000, after having seen its value multiplied by ten in a year, in a shoot that could continue and arouses the fear of a speculative "bubble".
Bitcoin, which is sold and purchased on specialized internet platforms, was worth $ 9,855 towards 0900 GMT, according to data from the Bloomberg agency. Its quotation rose almost 50% in the last two weeks.
In mid-October, this currency was exchanged for $ 5,000. The recent shooting is even more spectacular considering that Bitcoin started the year around $ 1,000, before falling as it happens regularly.
For the time being, it should continue to rise: "there is no factor on the horizon likely to make it go down," Shane Chanel, of ASR Wealth Advisers in Sydney, told AFP.
Without physical existence, bitcoin is based on a payment system between P2P people based on a technology called "blockchain", it is changed in specific internet platforms and has no legal tender.
It is not governed by a central bank or a government, but by a large international community and accepted in a growing number of transactions (restaurants, real estate ...).
According to its proponents, it offers a safe alternative to traditional divide: the "chain of blocks" makes the transactions unforgeable because, to modify information, it would have to be changed simultaneously to all users.
This feature is of great interest to the banking sector, where the "block chain" could simplify dematerialized transactions.
Wall Street lurking -
The American CME, one of the largest stock traders in the world, announced at the end of October that it will offer derivative products that allow speculation with bitcoin.
On Wall Street, the Goldman Sachs business bank also plans to speculate for its clients, a source close to the entity told AFP in early October. Also his rival JPMorgan Chase declared himself "very open" to the cryptocurrencies "controlled and regulated appropriately".
The arrival of these institutional investors to a market dominated by the individual actors "could reassure us that this is an investment object (normal) for the financial system", explains to the AFP Daisuke Yasaku, researcher at the Daiwa Institute of Research of Tokyo.
And yet, in mid-September, the president of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, had claimed that the bitcoin was a "scam" destined to explode. "It is the very definition of a bubble," Credit Suisse director Tidjane Thiam recently added.
The ups and downs of bitcoin arouse the fear of a speculative runaway: at its launch in February 2009, a bitcoin was worth only a few cents ...
Until now, the big banks had avoided working with bitcoin, while they warned about a very expensive currency to carry out illicit transactions because it escapes all control.
Without any "regulation", "the profits can be colossal, but the risks of (panic) sale movements too," warns James Hughes, an analyst with British brokerage firm AxiTrader.