Bitcoin is higher for a second straight day on Tuesday, trading up 6.5% at $1,110 a coin as of 2:13 p.m. ET. The cryptocurrency has rallied about 17% since Sunday's low, rebounding from a slump over the weekend that followed a Wall Street Journal report that the cryptocurrency's developers were threatening to set up a "hard fork," or alternative marketplace for bitcoin.
The new platform would be incompatible with the current platform, thus creating a split and two versions of the currency. That news sent bitcoin crashing 20% over the weekend to about $950 a coin, its weakest since January.
http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/58d16d55112f7047028b5b9c-1299/screen%20shot%202017-03-21%20at%2021128%20pm.png2017 has been a volatile year for the cryptocurrency.
It gained 20% in the first week of the year after soaring 120% in 2016 to become the top-performing currency for the second year in a row.
Bitcoin then crashed 35% on news that China was going to consider clamping down on trading.
But it managed to rip higher by more than 50% even in the face of several pieces of bad news.
First, China's biggest bitcoin exchanges said they were going to start charging a 0.2% fee on all transactions (previously there was no fee). Then, China's biggest exchanges said they were going to block withdrawals from trading accounts.
Still, bitcoin put in a record high of $1,327 a coin on March 10 as traders piled in ahead of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's ruling on the Winklevoss twins' bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The SEC denied the ETF, sending the price crashing by 16%. Bitcoin, however, managed to quickly recover those losses.
Two more SEC rulings are on the way, the next being March 30. Neither one is expected to pass.
http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-is-roaring-back-2017-3
