The day after tipping the monumental $10,000 milestone the rise and rise of the cryptocurrency has so far showed no signs of slowing the today's price representing (at the time of writing) a 8.34 percent rise worth a staggering $832.59 (£621.52) price rise for users and coin hoarders.

Alessio Bruni, general manager of Bitcoin wallet provider Luno told Express.co.uk that this kind of exponential growth is often driven by network effects. In short, according to Mr Bruni: "The more people who have access to something (like email, a Facebook account or Bitcoin), the more valuable it becomes.

Coinbase, the largest Bitcoin exchange in the United States, added around 100,000 accounts at the end of last week with the new influx of investor interest coinciding with the Thanksgiving holiday.

Similarly Luno are seeing a customer surge having just announced the on-boarding of their millionth cryptocurrency wallet holder.

Mr Bruni adds: "The other reason (for the rise) is that we’re seeing more signs of institutional money entering the market, especially in the US and Europe.

"There is an increased understanding of what Bitcoin is, what it can be used for - and what it can’t - and along with the market cap rising, funds and institutional investors are allocating a small percentage of their overall portfolio in digital currencies like Bitcoin."

On the tricky issue of how important is it for Bitcoin to be used as a currency Mr Bruni says that Bitcoin serves two purposes: "It can be used as a means of payment or used as a store of value (an alternative asset class).

"In the early days, many developers worked on Bitcoin with the hopes of it becoming a globally-integrated means of payment. It has been very successful in getting integrated in many businesses, platforms and wallets around the world, but the reality is that most people don’t use Bitcoin to make payments.

"Technologies (and companies) often end up at a very different place than was originally planned.

"Currently most people use Bitcoin as a store of value, an alternative asset.

"If the price stabilises, I assume more people will use it to make payments. Transactions have also become slower and more expensive in recent months, so it’s not a useful payment mechanism at the moment for smaller amounts of money.

"That said, it’s a technology, so it follows along a line of evolution and these fees and delays can very well be solved", Mr Bruni adds.

Breaking the $10 barrier puts Bitcoin up more than 900 percent so far in 2017 with prices now climbing above 230 percent since it began to kick off from the $3,000 low of mid-September.

Bitcoin's market capitalisation is now close to $170 billion, additional market data shows. The rise and rise of Bitcoin - which began as merely an academic paper and some accompanying source code in 2009 - makes it more valuable than an increasing number of the world's best-known companies.

Bitcoin is now worth more (total market capitalisation) than Walt Disney, McDonald's, IBM and Goldman Sachs. And, as reported yesterday, former Fortress hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz told CNBC that he expects Bitcoin to multiply more than four times in roughly the next 13 months.

Mr Novogratz said: "Bitcoin could be at $40,000 (£30,068) at the end of 2018. It easily could.”

However suggestions that the bubble is set to burst has been heightened by data available with Google Trends showing people around the world are searching "buy bitcoin with credit card" with Nigeria and the volcanic tropical island of St Helena being among top searchers for these words.

Google measures the search result on a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 is the maximum search interest for the time and location selected.

At time of press the search phrase "buy bitcoin with credit card" is registering maximum search interest and is hovering at around 100.