EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
Bitcoin teases $16,000 as investor surge causes Coinbase trading delays
The price of bitcoin recovered in trading today as increased investor interest saw one exchange suffer trading delays once again.
After a pre-Christmas slump that saw its price drop to as low as $11,000, investors returned to the market, driving the price back through $16,000 briefly before settling at $15,883.77 as of 8:30 p.m. EST.
The price recovery was seen as a positive by at least some observers. Nolan Bauerle, director of research at CoinDesk, told CNBC that it was related to improved access to buying cryptocurrencies. “After last week’s sell-off, order books got some breathing room,” Bauerle said. “Those that wanted to buy at all-time highs suddenly saw discounts and more importantly could actually buy from exchanges that worked through the backlog.”
The increased trading volume resulted in lengthy processing delays at leading bitcoin exchange Coinbase Inc. Its status page as of 1:24 p.m. EST said that “due to high volume, we are experiencing a backlog of outgoing transactions for BTC and ETH” and that they while it was working on increasing their capacity, transactions could be delayed for several hours. An update at 6 p.m. added that although it had cleared the ETH backlog, “we are still working through a backlog for BTC.”
Despite being bitcoin’s largest company by both investment and valuation, Coinbase has an extensive track record of having issues with volume, most recently suspending trading on Dec. 22. The company is also investigating allegations that its employees were involved in insider trading on Bitcoin Cash, another launch that resulted in Coinbase having to suspend trading Dec. 19.
Bitcoin’s price increase came as a new report claims that the cryptocurrency boom of 2017 has also had some further impact: something of a crypto jobs boom. Fortune reported today that bitcoin- and blockchain-related jobs on LinkedIn have risen 306 percent in the 12 months ending in mid-November. The increase is even bigger for job listings with the word “bitcoin” in the headline, growing to 4,917 so far this year, a jump of 5,753 percent.
Image: MaxPixel
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