After over two weeks of trading low, Bitcoin peaked once again. Over the weekend, Bitcoin crossed the $11,000 mark for the first time since its continuous drop earlier this month. It is up over 80 percent since it bottomed at $5.947.40 on February 6.
The price of the cryptocurrency went as high as $11,279.18 on Sunday, which was its most elevated level since January 30, according to CoinDesk’s bitcoin price index. On Monday, bitcoin was trading at $10,789 at around 9:30 a.m. GMT.
After the massive sell-off in early February, Bitcoin’s price has been slowly climbing. The fall in its price is said to have been triggered by fears over tighter regulation, rumors of price manipulation in the market, and a hack on cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck that saw over $500 million stolen.
In South Korea, a key market for bitcoin, there were fears that an outright ban on cryptocurrency trading could come into effect. But as new measures were implemented, they were less strict than investors thought, and many sounded a positive note.
Earlier this month, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Christopher Giancarlo, and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jay Clayton, gave a testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee on cryptocurrencies. They struck a positive tone, with Giancarlo saying that regulators should have a “thoughtful and balance response, and not a dismissive one.”
Tom Lee, the first major Wall Street strategist to cover bitcoin, said recently that bitcoin will likely rise to $25,000 this year. Kay Van-Petersen, an analyst at Saxo Bank, who correctly predicted the cryptocurrency’s rally at the start of last year, told CNBC in a recent interview that bitcoin could go to $100,000. Robert Herjavec of Shark Tank said in a recent interview that he was positive Bitcoin would skyrocket again.
There are, however, a number of major organizations and figures warning about the potential for cryptocurrencies to crash. Goldman Sachs said in a note this month that most digital coins are likely to fall to zero. Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin, also warned Sunday that cryptocurrencies are a “hyper-volatile” asset class and “could drop to near-zero at any time.”
