Bitcoin surges past $5,300 'as bulls returned to the market with a vengeance'
MI
Bitcoin soared past $5,000 for the first time early Thursday morning and it continued to hit to new heights throughout the trading day.
The red-hot digital currency, which is up more than 400% this year, blew past $5,300 to $5,382 just after 12 p.m. ET. Sell-off pressure has since pushed the coin back down below $5,300.
It is still up near 10% Thursday.
The $5,000 mark has long been a threshold of high-anticipation in the bitcoin community. Traders got a taste of it in early September when bitcoin hit a high of $4,921, according to data from Bloomberg.
Soon after that, its price declined amid news of a crackdown in China and regulatory uncertainty around initial coin offerings, a cryptocurrency-based fundraising method. After bottoming out near $2,900 per coin on September 15, it has since rallied.
That has come as no surprise to folks in the bitcoin community, who say government regulations and crackdowns on the coin have little impact on its underpinning technology or its price.
“Bitcoin was designed to operate outside of the influence of governments and central banks, and is doing exactly that," said Iqbal V. Gandham, a managing director at eToro UK. "So to us, this bounce back in price is no surprise."
Josh Olszwicz, a bitcoin trader, told Business Insider during an interview in mid-September that the markets ignored news out of China because it didn't impact on the coin's actual blockchain technology.
"If it doesn't affect the protocol, then it's not a real problem," he told Business Insider."The bitcoin cash shakeup was much more worrisome from my perspective, but even then the core bitcoin protocol remained unaffected."
Bitcoin has seen its value increase by more than $1,000 per coin in the past week alone, with a rally that coincides with renewed interest in the currency from investment banks. The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Goldman Sachs was looking at setting up a bitcoin trading operation, and Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said recently that the cryptocurrency was "certainly more than just a fad."
The day's rise comes "as bulls returned to the market with a vengeance," according to Neil Wilson, a senior analyst at ETX Capital.
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