Bitcoin was trading at $9,908.34 in India today on CoinDesks’s Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) at the time of reporting. Earlier in the day, Bitcoin price was recorded at a high of $10,277.99. On Thursday, the digital currency crossed $9,000 – a psychologically key level for the virtual currency. However, Bitcoin is still far from reaching the figure of $19,783 that it touched on December 17, 2017. Bitcoin was under intense pressure in the last two months amid a series of negative headlines around increased scrutiny by regulators worldwide. However, sentiments related to Bitcoin have improved substantially over the last few weeks. Even in India, Reserve Bank has issued repeated warnings to the investors who have invested in digital currencies especially Bitcoin. In the budget 2018 speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that cryptocurrency is not a legal tender in India. However, the government will explore blockchain to usher in the digital economy, he said.
The rise in Bitcoin last year has almost coincided with the bull rally observed in the global stock markets, Reuters quoted Miles Eakers, chief market analyst, at FX brokerage Centtrip saying. Just like Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies namely Ethereum and Ripple also surged in the last few weeks. Bitcoin’s rise to $10,000, first time in more than 2 weeks, has raised hopes among the investors as they purchased back the virtual currency after it fell 70 percent from the all-time high reported in mid-December.
As Bitcoin observed a steady recovery, Yves Mersch, European Central Bank executive board member, issued a warning during his speech in Paris that Bitcoin is a speculative digital asset, Market News International reported. These currencies are devoid of any trusted issuer and hence, will become worthless at any point in time, he added. There is no surprise that these digital currencies are not accepted widely as means of payment, he further said. Nouriel Roubini, the famous American economist who rightly predicted the housing crash of 2008 in the US, had termed Bitcoin mania as mother of all bubbles that will burst anytime soon.
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