Bitcoin's price hit a record at $261 on the Bitstamp onlineexchange, driven by wider acceptance of the virtual currency.
|The digital money, which can be used to pay for goods andservices on the Internet, has risen 20-fold so far this year, astrading activity has increased. Bitcoins were trading at US$259.02apiece at 1:17 p.m. in New York on Bitstamp, one of the more activeWeb-based exchanges where Bitcoins are traded for dollars, euros,and other currencies.
|The rally comes a month after the closing of the “Silk RoadHidden Website,” where people could obtain drugs, guns, and otherillicit goods using Bitcoins. The virtual currency lost a third ofits value in the days after the website was shut down. Bitcoins arebecoming increasingly popular, particularly in China, said UgoEgbunike, director of business development at IndexUniverse, anindex-fund researcher.
|“I thought Silk Road is going to do some damage to the price,”Egbunike said. “But with BTC China buying this up—they seem to havepicked up the slack.”
|BTC China is now the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, NicholasColas, a ConvergEx Group analyst, wrote in a Nov. 5 report.
|The virtual currency exists as software that's designed to beuntraceable, making it an attractive tender for those seeking totrade anonymously via the Web. Since being introduced in 2008 by aprogrammer or group of programmers going under the name of SatoshiNakamoto, Bitcoin is being used to pay from everything fromcupcakes to electronics on the Internet, with almost 12 millionBitcoins in circulation, according to Bitcoincharts, a website thattracks the digital money's activity.
|Bitcoin's previous record was US$259.34 on Bitstamp in April.The virtual currency was also trading for US$272 apiece on Mt. Gox,another online exchange, today.
|“If James Bond, Sergey Brin, and Paul Volcker all got togetherand designed their ideal currency, it might look a lot likebitcoin,” Colas wrote in the note.
|Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rightsreserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,or redistributed.
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