However, bitcoin price smashed past $2,400 on June 1, giving a cool 140% return in a mere 5-month period. The sceptics had started ringing warning bells by claiming that the bitcoin rally had breached an unsustainable level. But as if the bitcoin rally had just commenced and the 140% return was a precursor to great heights that it was going to achieve in the late part of the year.
The rally continued and continued for not to abate anytime soon. The price maintained the same level the next two months in July and August. It hit a gigantic feat on September 1 when the price surged past $4,900. This means if someone had invested Rs 1 lakh on January 1 was sitting on nearly Rs 5 lakh in just eight months. Again, sceptics and optimists had discord over the alleged departure of price from the underlying's intrinsic value.While the debate over bitcoin price, which had surged past the expectations of most optimistic investors, was still on, the price surprised everyone again in November when it hit $6,700 on the first day.
As the year came to a close, the prices went berserk as if the best was kept for the last. The price surged so madly and so phenomenally that no rational reasoning merited its rise. The rise was met with awe and it seemed that the bitcoin prices were on steroids. The bitcoin price hit $10,840, rising by over 10 times in less than a year.
In less than a week, the prices rose further and hit $16,600 on December 7. Imagine, you had invested mere Rs 10,000 (equivalent to an SIP on January 1) and by December 7, you would be sitting on a net worth of Rs 1,66,000 in less than a year. The rise was attributed to the roll out of bitcoin futures trading by CBOE and CME Group, two prominent US-based futures exchanges, thus giving them a semblance of legitimacy to the hitherto controversial digital currency.
When this was not enough, the bitcoin prices continued to dance and hit a further high of $19,666 on December 17. Soon after, for lack of positive cues, the prices pared some of the gains and got stable around $14,000 towards the end of the year. On December 31, the bitcoin prices closed at $13,880 on Luxembourg-based exchange BitStamp, posting an annual gain of 1,400%.
