UPDATED 00:01 EDT / MAY 09 2019

BLOCKCHAIN

Bitcoin breaks through $6,000, its highest level since November

The price of bitcoin surged through $6,000 in trading Wednesday, its highest price since November.

Why it did so isn’t clear, especially coming after news that Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, reported it had been hacked.

Bitcoinist noted that the upward trend started around the same time China instructed banks to limit foreign currency withdrawals. Despite China banning bitcoin exchanges and more recently proposing a ban on bitcoin mining, the cryptocurrency remains popular in the Middle Kingdom.

The country has strict controls on foreign exchange and has doubly cracked down as its economy, booming since the post-Mao era reforms by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, has finally started to slow. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are appealing to people in mainland China because it’s an under-the-table way for them to get their renminbi, the official currency of China, out of the country.

Ars Technica, while noting that bitcoin’s rise may well be completely random, also said a series of positive news, including increasing support for bitcoin particularly from institutional investors, may be behind the latest surge. That news includes financial services firm Fidelity Investments Inc. about to enter the market, alongside ETrade Financial Corp., Robinhood Financial LLC and TD Ameritrade Inc. either launching bitcoin trading or rumored to be doing so.

The same report also mentions reports that Facebook is in the process of creating its own cryptocurrency as possibly being significant in bitcoin’s apparent bull run.

What is clear is that bitcoin is rising in what Forbes described as a “crypto spring” after a long, “Game of Thrones”-like winter, the long, precipitous decline in the cryptocurrency in 2018 that finally bottomed out in December.

Bitcoin was trading at $6,028.79 as of 11:50 p.m. EDT, down slightly from a 24-hour high of $6,058.27, according to CoinDesk’s bitcoin price tracker.

Image: 30478819@N08/Flickr

Since you’re here …

… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.