Bitcoin price has made marked gains in the early days of April as prices reach a high of $1,133 on a global average, gaining over 3% in a 24-hour trading period.
As bitcoin gains recognition as a legal method of payment in April, the beginning of a new fiscal year in many regions around the world has coincided with marked gains by the world’s most popular cryptocurrency with renewed interest amid traders.
Data from the Bitstamp Price Index (BPI) reveals bitcoin prices starting the month on Saturday at $1,070. Flirting with $1,100 throughout the weekend, bitcoin breached the level with a leap in the early hours of trading on Monday (UTC). Bitcoin price began the day at $1,076 on the BPI before a positive 60-minute trading period helped prices scale to $1,107 at 01:00 UTC.
The bullish trend stuck, with gains made through the early half of Monday to reach 2-week BPI high of $1128.9 at 06:00 AM.
Despite a brief dip, the rising trend sees bitcoin price trading near the high as it pushes toward $1,130 on the BPI.
At this time last month, bitcoin prices were trading at record all-time highs, reaching the $1,300 milestone in the lead-up to the SEC’s decision concerning the Winklevoss brothers’ bitcoin ETF. Ethereum, the second biggest digital currency after bitcoin, also made remarkable gains, as both cryptocurrencies spurred the digital currency space on to scale a combined market capital of over $24 billion. On the day of the ETF decision, bitcoin spiked to an all-time high of $1,350 on Bitstamp. However, the SEC’s rejection resulted in bitcoin prices crashing below $1,000.
Bitcoin prices’ newest influencer stems from the ongoing scalability debate that has spurred on talk of a possible hard fork of the cryptocurrency’s core. The uncertainty resulted in bitcoin trading below $1,000 after mid-March. However, there appears to be renewed confidence among traders with over $700 million in bitcoin traded over the last 24 hours.
Years after the Mt. Gox debacle that engulfed the now-defunct Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange – the largest in the world at the time- into controversy, Japan’s recognition of bitcoin as a legal payment method is a resounding vote of acceptance for the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole.
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All time references are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Featured image from Shutterstock. Chart from BitcoinWisdom.
