New bubble, new crash ?: Bitcoin has grown up

The total value of all Bitcoin has jumped to a record high. The price shoots up like it did at the height of the hype three years ago. But the market for digital currency has changed.

It's a déjà vu. The Bitcoin price shoots up again at a dizzying speed. In the spring, the leading digital currency was worth less than 4,000 US dollars; today it is well over 18,000 euros. Bitcoin is still a few hundred dollars away from the record price a good three years ago. Since more of the digital coins now exist, the market capitalization, the arithmetical total value of all existing Bitcoin, has already exceeded its highest level at the time of 338 billion dollars.

Bitcoin 17,777.51

But will it continue after the rally as it did at the end of 2017, when a bubble burst that some described as the largest of its kind in financial history? Some observers assume exactly that. "Fomo buyers have taken over the market," Bitcoin analyst Kevin Svenson tweeted a few days ago. After a period of exuberance, there will be a strong correction when such short-term oriented buyers, who are driven by fear of missing out (Fomo, Fear of missing out), throw their Bitcoin back on the market.

This time, however, some things are different than three years ago, when Bitcoin only lost around a third of its value within a few weeks and then around 80 percent of its value within a year after the record. There is currently no comparable hype about the digital currency among the public. The searches for Bitcoin on Google show only a fraction of the interest that was in December 2017. Bitcoin optimists argue that this suggests that the current increase is due more to investments by professionals and institutions than to fickle small investors. Therefore, the cryptocurrency, which was so volatile in the past, should stabilize.

Compared to many other forms of investment, the crypto market is still more volatile. The role of some anonymous owners of gigantic Bitcoin assets, so-called whales, in price movements still creates suspicion. But the market has developed considerably over the past three years. For a few weeks now, the payment service PayPal has been accepting Bitcoin as its currency. Serious plans by the major central banks for possible official digital currencies have brought the blockchain issue to the center of the financial world. Numerous large banks and financial institutions have since joined. One example is the change of heart at JPMorgan. The boss at the time, Jamie Dimon, had dismissed Bitcoin as a "fraud" in 2017. Recently, however, analysts at the bank described the digital currency as a possible investment alternative to gold.

British crypto expert Glen Goodman believes that a new price record could, even if this should be followed by another correction, bring another breakthrough for Bitcoin into the mainstream. This, he is quoted in the business magazine Forbes, will "catapult the digital currency back into the headlines" and generate new interest from the "mainstream".

. (tagsToTranslate) Economy (t) Bitcoin