Why it matters to you
Bitcoin is on another one of its tears and though we don’t know when it will stop, it’s breaking new cryptocurrency value records as it goes.
Don’t blink. You might open your eyes to find Bitcoin is worth more than $6,000, if its current trajectory is anything to go by. As the cryptocurrency continues to repeat its regular boom and bust cycle, while trending upward overall, it has surpassed $5,000 and shows little sign of stopping.
Depending on who you ask, Bitcoin’s status as the most prominent cryptocurrency in the world was never in doubt. It has faced some challenges in 2017, most notably the Bitcoin Cash hard fork and a recent shuttering of Bitcoin trading in China. But that appears to have done little to stymie Bitcoin’s growth.
At the start of 2017, a single Bitcoin would have cost you just over $1,000 — quite high, actually, considering it had been less than half that a year before. But that peak proved to be just the start of the currency’s latest boom, with explosive interest sending it to new heights within months and now it sits at a new all-time high of $5,707 at the time of writing.
Perhaps more notably, that’s sending its overall market value into the very-high 11-figures. If it keeps going, we could see the first cryptocurrency market value break the $100 billion barrier.
If there have been so many problems with the currency this year though, why the latest bubble? Ars believes it could be Bitcoin’s use as a foundation for the initial coin offerings (ICO) of new cryptocurrencies. While buying a new currency with real-world money isn’t easy, Bitcoin’s intrinsic ease of transfer means it’s a great interim medium for transactions with new coins. Buying Bitcoin in order to buy newer coins drives up its value.
With a myriad of different cryptocurrencies now in use around the world — including one designed exclusively for dentistry — there’s plenty of investment in Bitcoin to be had as a secondary aspect of their ICOs. Anyone who has looked at Bitcoin’s history though, will expect a bursting of this current bubble. Traditionally Bitcoin value rises amid new interest, reaching new heights only to crash down again shortly after as confidence waivers, before gradually making its way back up again.
Although it’s never a guarantee and we would certainly caution any readers before investing heavily into something as volatile as Bitcoin, its rises and falls in value have become more predictable as time goes on.