The unprecedented rally in Bitcoin price continues, with the digital currency hitting the $27,647.23 mark on Sunday. This is another milestone after it touched $25,000 on December 25 and $26,000 on December 26. With this meteoric rise, Bitcoin’s market value has now exceeded $500 billion, as per Coindesk, a cryptocurrency platform.
This is more than $460.06 billion m-cap of Visa, the world’s biggest financial service company, as per the Companiesmarketcap data. Both, however, are different and may not be compared: Visa is for-profit financial business while Bitcoin peer-to-peer software system. Not only Visa, but Bitcoin is valued more than biggest publicly traded companies like Samsung ($463.63 billion) and Walmart ($406.00 billion), the data shows.
The upward rally is expected to continue as Bitcoin has seen a speedy rise since it hit the key psychological mark $20,000 for the first time on December 16. The cryptocurrency surged to its all-time high of $27,666.17 on Sunday before settling down at $27,647.23 at the time of filing the report. This is roughly 11.1 per cent rise compared to the previous day.
The world’s most renowned cryptocurrency has seen an unprecedented rise this year, with its value witnessing a 240 per cent jump in 2020.
Ever since PayPal – the online payment major – announced in March that it’ll enable its account holders to use Bitcoin, the value of the cryptocurrency has shot up from $5,000 to $25,000. This marks a colossal 400 per cent increase in the past eight months. ZebPay, one of India’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has predicted that Bitcoin’s value could hit over $135,000 by 2030.
Launched in 2009, Bitcoin became the first cryptocurrency to adopt a decentralised network for transactions based on block-chains. This exempts the currency from central bank policies and regulations, thereby deriving its value through a process called ‘mining.’ Bitcoins can be transferred using peer-to-peer transactions, the data record-keeping of which are done by blockchains. As of today, Bitcoin is responsible for about 66 per cent of the global cryptocurrency market.
Also read: Bitcoin hits $25,000-mark; 400% increase since March