Bitcoin Is Sticking to Its $8,000 High. Here’s What’s Keeping It Afloat

Mon Nov 20 2017
Rachel Long (653 articles)
Bitcoin Is Sticking to Its $8,000 High. Here’s What’s Keeping It Afloat

Bitcoin is continuing its good performance of the last few days. After its value briefly cleared the $ 8,000 mark on one exchange on Friday, it surpassed $ 8,110 on Sunday and is $ 8,048 at the time of writing.

This has been a highly volatile month for bitcoin—though the same can be said for most months. A couple of weeks ago, bitcoin hit a $ 7,888 high before falling as low as $ 6,800, then climbing back up again.

At the start of the year, one bitcoin was only worth around $ 1,000. Back in August, with the price at $ 3,500, analysts were being bullish by claiming bitcoin might clear $ 5,000 next year. Goldman Sachs analysts forecast the $ 8,000 barrier’s breakage earlier this month, suggesting there may be further surges in store.

The latest positivity comes as institutional investors start to push harder into the cryptocurrency world, with CME having recently announced plans to trade bitcoin futures and Coinbase offering a custodian service for hedge funds. Last week, Square also started testing bitcoin payments on its Cash app.

The “Segwit2x” fork, which would have split bitcoin into two factions, was also recently cancelled, at least formally. Some bitcoin-mining nodes still tried running the Segwit2x code, although reports emerged at the weekend suggesting that a bug in the code stopped it from working.

Rachel Long

Rachel Long

Rachel Long is our Desk Correspondent covering Stock Markets across the globe. She is based in New York