Bitcoin Climbs Above $1,800

Bitcoin’s growing just about as fast as we can write about it — as are a number of other cryptocurrencies, for that matter.

It only took just over one day for bitcoin to break the record it set earlier this week. On Thursday (May 11) of this week, bitcoin saw values break above $1,800 for the first time in history.

It’s a crazy amount of growth — up a full 81 percent since the beginning of 2017 and nearly triple (299 percent) the value at this time last year.

On Thursday afternoon, CoinDesk pegged bitcoin at $1,832.35, up 4.30 percent for the day, though down from a high of a $1,839.23 earlier in the morning. The digital currency’s market cap stood at just under $30 billion, with some $16.3 million in circulation.

At the time of writing, bitcoin had settled back down a bit, dipping into the $1,780s.

With the latest rise, exchanges have seen a dampening of the widened exchange spread trends over the past few weeks. Bitfinex saw trading about $50 higher than average, a significant decrease from recent $100 disparities.

With growth like this, the “outrageous prediction” that bitcoin could hit $2,000 in 2017 doesn’t seem quite so out there. (To be fair, the exact circumstances around the price rise from Saxo’s report were far different.)

At this time, there’s still no readily apparent catalyst on the market. One hypothesis is that investor optimism is rising in response to the SEC’s decision to review its rejection of the Winklevoss bitcoin-based ETF.

And it’s not just bitcoin. Practically every cryptocurrency has seen an uptick in value in the last month. Ethereum (ETH), for instance, has more than octupled (up 877 percent) since the new year, worth some $89 at the time of writing.

The total crypto-market cap grew from $27.8 billion to over $53.8 billion in just over 30 days. Whether or not all of this rapid growth represents a digital bubble looking to burst is an open question among analysts.