Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2013 and describes the night of 18 November 2013; the Bitcoin prices it cites ($150, $500, $900, $580 and $700) and its view that Bitcoin can be anything but a serious, safe currency reflect that night only.
Bitcoin keeps showing that it can be anything except a serious, safe digital currency. Of course, we have held this view since one bitcoin was worth $150, and today it has reached as much as $900. Tempting… isn’t it?
Tonight the “currency”, which was worth $500 just 36 hours ago, climbed to $900 and then fell back to $580 within minutes. Right now it is starting another gradual recovery and is already back at $700. So what happened to send the digital currency up and then down?
Although nothing really needs to happen for moves like these, in this case Ben Bernanke had sent a letter to the Senate saying that digital currencies like Bitcoin could be promising, which sent Bitcoin sharply higher.
During the day, the Senate held a debate on whether digital currencies could cause problems for consumers and concluded that they could not, and that took Bitcoin to $900.
But… later on, a rumour that has been doing the rounds for some time gathered strength: that many miners could be rigging Bitcoin by taking control of the creation of new bitcoins. Some experts think this situation could make Bitcoin collapse. That is what knocked Bitcoin down to $580, although it has been recovering since.
Featured image: http://bitcoincharts.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
