Bitcoin is on a roll, and as of late, it appears unstoppable.
How One Currency Is Defying All Odds
The price of bitcoin recently rose to $7,000 on Sunday morning in the United States, marking a new nine-month high for everybody’s favorite cryptocurrency. The coin has been pushing its price further and further since early April, and thus far, it has kept up its present momentum.
Bitcoin reached (as we all remember) $20,000 per unit in December of 2017. It was a great gift, right on time for that year’s holiday season following nearly 24 straight months of bullish activity and steady price rises. Many enthusiasts and traders thought that bearish activity would inherently become a thing of the past, and that bitcoin would continue to rise further up the technical charts.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite the case. By January 2018, the currency had dropped by $4,000 into the $16,000 range. Many largely blamed this fall on the Coincheck hack that had occurred earlier in the month. Coincheck marked the largest hack of a cryptocurrency exchange in the industry’s history, beating out the record originally held by Mt. Gox.
More than half-a-billion in assorted crypto funds were stolen overnight, and Coincheck was widely reprimanded for its use of hot wallet storage tactics. In a day and age where crypto theft was practically a regular gig, one couldn’t understand why such a large exchange wouldn’t resort to cold storage to keep funds safe and secure.
The event caused Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) to get involved in the space. The organization began monitoring Coincheck’s operations to make sure that it could increase its safety measures for customers. It did the same thing for several other exchanges within Japan and began sending warning letters to all those who didn’t meet the agency’s standards. The time had come to either shape up or ship out.
It later seemed like Coincheck had little to do with bitcoin’s fall considering the coin continued to drop heavily. It later fell to $12,000 then $11,000, and it was at $9,000 by the end of February.
The Currency Is Now at $7,000
By the time summer had rolled around, bitcoin was trading in the $6,000 range. It stayed here until November 2018, when the bitcoin cash hard fork took place. The fork proved very controversial and brought the currency down into the $3,500 range. It stayed here until just over a month ago, and it’s been on a steady rise ever since.
Aside from the price jumps, we’re also witnessing great maturity with bitcoin considering it has managed to sustain its momentum despite a recent hack that saw millions of dollars in bitcoin stolen from popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance. A few years ago, an event like this would have caused bitcoin’s price to fall further. This time, bitcoin pushed beyond the negative waves and retained its position.