The price of the virtual currency bitcoin has broken the $8,000 barrier for the first time, prompting speculation that it could soar past $10,000 by the end of the year.
The rise means one unit of the world’s first major cryptocurrency is now valued at more than six times an ounce of gold, traditionally seen as a safe-haven investment in times of economic turmoil.
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Bitcoin’s value is regularly volatile but despite several steep falls this year it has now surged tenfold from around $800 at the beginning of 2017 to more than $8,000 in the early hours of Friday morning.
Its latest increase, a month after it broke through $5,000, is linked to speculation about the likelihood of a “hard fork” to create a spin-off currency.
Expectations of a fork tend to boost bitcoin because when it happens, existing holders gain some of the new currency for free.
Bitcoin’s market price has been volatile lately after the cancellation of a technical upgrade known as SegWit2x, designed to increase transaction speeds.
According to the cryptocurrency exchange CoinBase, a large number of bitcoin “miners” – people who provide the computational power that underpins bitcoin in exchange for the chance of financial reward – could now go ahead with their own upgrade. There is speculation that this could trigger a fork.
Source
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/17/bitcoin-breaks-8000-barrier-amid-speculation-over-spin-off