Bitcoin Surges Past $12,000 For First Time: Five Things To Know About The Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin zooms to a new record of $12,193 on Tuesday on BitStamp. The most famous digital currency has been surging to record highs lately. Just last week the bitcoin prices had touched $ 11,000 to hit a record high for the sixth day in a row after gaining more than $1,000 in just 12 hours. Prior to that, the cryptocurrency had hit $10,000 for the first time in history. Read here how bitcoins became bigger than the New Zealand economy. 

Five things that you should know about bitcoins: world's most popular cryptocurrency

 

1. Bitcoin has been breaking its records in quick succession one after the other. No sooner is a record is made than it is broken. The earlier thresholds of $10,000 and $ 11,000 have been breached in less than a week each.

2. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday reiterated its concern of the future of bitcoins and uncertainty surrounding it. The RBI said it wanted to reinforce its previous message to "users, holders and traders of Virtual Currencies (VCs) including Bitcoins regarding the potential economic, financial, operational, legal, customer protection and security related risks associated in dealing with such VCs."

3. A few days ago, soon after the virtual currency had hit the ceiling of $11,000, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley clarified that India doesn't consider the bitcoin 'as a legal currency as of now'.

4. The currency has reported more than 900% rise this year, the most for any asset class, and not only for any currency.

5. Bitcoin took 834 days to top $1,000 from the time that BitStamp started to track the price in August 2011. It was another 1,270 days to hit $2,000 on May 20, 2017. However, the price has surged in the later half of 2017, crossing successive $1,000 milestones with ever increasing speed on its march toward $10,000 .