The price of the much speculated upon Bitcoin shot above US $11,000 in price for the first time since 8 March 2018. The cryptocurrency’s price according to Coinmarketcap reached $11,137 on Saturday, 22 June 2019. At the time of writing this article, however, it had climbed down slightly to $10,754.
This recent price jump, according to Coindesk, was spurred by an increase in trade volumes with $21 billion worth of bitcoins have traded across cryptocurrency exchanges in just 24 hours on 21 June.
“The bounce back of Bitcoin has been fairly extraordinary,” said George McDonaugh, chief executive and co-founder of London-based blockchain and cryptocurrency investment firm KR1 Plc. “Money didn’t leave the asset behind, it just sat on the sidelines waiting to get back in.”
Coindesk comments on the coming months:
Looking forward, BTC may continue to shine bright as the cryptocurrency is set to undergo mining reward halving sometime in May 2020.
The process designed to curb inflation by reducing the reward for mining on bitcoin’s blockchain is repeated every four years and leads to supply deficit.
The upcoming reward halving may leave a bigger supply deficit if Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra ends up boosting bitcoin’s appeal and adoption rate as predicted by some observers.
Bitcoin was the subject of fevered speculation especially at the end of 2018 when its price reached $18,000. In Zimbabwe, unscrupulous people have also taken advantage of the ignorance of most people on the subject of cryptocurrencies to get them to invest in pyramid schemes and other questionable investments.