According to CNBC, increased investor interest in Bitcoin around the Thanksgiving holiday and the US launch of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange by trading volume, Tokyo-based bitFlyer, rocketed the digital currency to $11,000 less than 24 hours after topping $10,000 in the waning hours of November. Due to its current volatility, an hour after Bitcoin reached $11,000 it started trading near $10,777.27. But as a result of the surprising success, the Wall Street Journal reported that both Nasdaq and Cantor Fitzgerald will be launching Bitcoin futures in 2018. The new market will hopefully bring more stability to the cryptocurrency market by adding investors and liquidity.
Furthermore, CNBC notes that: “Since Bitcoin’s market capitalization is less than $200 billion, the digital currency could rise dramatically if it draws even a tiny fraction of the world’s $200 trillion in traditional financial market assets.” After this November rally, even JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO has been an outspoken critic of Bitcoin, is planning to start offering CME Bitcoin futures to its clients.
Bitcoin has also been making big splashes in retail, with Amazon buying three cryptocurrency-related domain names at the start of November. The speculation that the e-commerce giant could be preparing to move into the cryptocurrency space also helped boost Bitcoin’s November pricing.
The CEO of Overstock, Amazon’s competitor, recently said in a FOX Business interview when asked about Bitcoin being in a bubble: “You think that’s a bubble? What do you think that fiat currency you carry around in your purse is?” He told the audience: “It’s about time the world switches to real money. Either gold or Bitcoin.” Overstock has been more bullish on Bitcoin and blockchain companies than Amazon and, as a result, the company’s stock has soared nearly 200 percent this year.
People around the globe are seemingly as bullish as Overstock, with a record number of 100,000 new users signing up for the London-based Blockchain.info Bitcoin wallet provider the day of the $11,000 mark. In addition, the average daily trading volume on US-based cryptocurrency exchange GDAX has multiplied 10 times this year, according to GDAX head Adam White.
But the new peak also has analysts speculating that Bitcoin is in a bubble soon to pop worse than the dot-com bubble. What do you think?