Bitcoin is the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. According to a range of bitcoin exchanges, including Coinbase and Kraken, it's worth more than $2,000 per coin. The milestone is putting bitcoin into the market cap of $32.92 billion.
The valuation caps a strong month for the virtual currency, with its value growing by more than 65 percent in a month. The rise is believed to be linked to policy changes several parts of the world. It's also due to investors in increasingly treating it as a new gold standard, and countries such as Japan and China started integrating it into their banking systems.
"It will continue to rise in price as inflation goes higher and there is world turmoil," said Jonathan Johnson, president of Medici Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Overstock.com that focuses on blockchain, the technology that underlies digital assets such as bitcoin,
Bitcoin emerged in 2008, invented by an unknown programmer, or a group of programmers, under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Since its release in January 2009, the digital currency that is based around cryptography quickly gained traction.
Bitcoin, sometimes frowned upon as a currency of the underworld. But it's fast pace is affecting the financial world. The rising interest in bitcoin has also started the creation of many other cryptocurrencies. These have proved popular as the technology underlying bitcoin has struggled to cope with its popularity and growth.
While bitcoin is having a strong growth, rivals like Ripple is also gaining traction. The centralized currency that is aiming to be a settlement protocol for major banks, has surged more than 1000 percent in under a month, making it now the second most valuable cryptocurrency in circulation after bitcoin. Ethereum is also gaining value far faster than bitcoin over the last few months.
The surging valuations has led some suggestions that say cryptocurrency bubble is going to happen. At the moment of announcement, the cryptocurrency market cap is predicted to be around $70 billion.
