BITCOIN's price rise fell flat last night after hitting a high of $8,616.81. The current price has gained a very tidy 41 percent increase - $3,400 - from its Tuesday low but the northernly trajectory has flattened leading to fears that it wasn't a recovery but rather a temporary rebound from a prolonged decline.
7.30am MORNING HEADLINES
Updates below throughout the day....
Bitcoin is priced at $7,998 at the time of press, a $239 loss on the day so far.
The morning after US stocks tumbled another 3.8 percent to a new low for the year, Bitcoin's positive return was also curtailed.
Bitcoin is still seen by financial experts as unrelated to the mainstream economy. However, they are loosely linked and the stock market would be hit if the cryptocurrency bubble was to burst.
The head of equity strategy at Wells Fargo warned the stock market would feel the effects of a bitcoin burst because there appears to be a link between the two.
Christopher Harvey said: “On Monday what we saw is all risk products sell off.”
Mr Harvey believes a blow to the market can lead to investors to panic and begin selling bitcoin.
As he explained it, “sometimes adds fuel to the fire”.
The Investopedia blog has described the move from February 2nd panic selling panic selling to the 40 percent return this week as, "a dead cat bounce".
Significantly less obtuse than much of the language associated with Wall Street - a "dead cat bounce" is a temporary rebound from a prolonged decline that is then followed by the continuation of the downtrend.
Investopedia say that the next level of significant return will not come until roughly $10,000 but for Bitcoin's return to become something more meaningful, "the coin's price would need to rise above its long-term downtrend, which for now comes in at around $12,000".
9.38am - UPDATE - Billionaires become millionaires, and then billionaires
Earlier this week Forbes created one of their signature rich lists for the cryptocurrency world.
The prestigious, albeit extremely volatile list included all the biggest names in the crypto-sphere including investors the Winklevoss twins and the heads of the popular exchanges - Coinbase and Binance.
Forbes admits that the figures are estimates and liable to change on an hourly basis given the volatile nature of the assets.
Elusive bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto did not come forward and is not included in the list. Without any firm data on Mr Nakamoto, Ripple’s co-founder Chris Larsen came out on top.
However, the New York Times wrote today that while the list in Forbes magazine, which was assembled in recent weeks, identifies about 10 virtual currency billionaires, "most of them were not billionaires by the time the feature went online on Wednesday morning".
By: DAVID DAWKINS
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