It seemingly cannot be stopped.
At least one thing does seem sure, at least for now – there are a lot more buyers than sellers of Bitcoin and its cryptocurrency cousins Ethereum, Dash, et al. More demand than supply.
As we’ve written before on several occasions, weekends seem to be a popular time for Bitcoin price spikes and the heavily online shopped weekend sandwiching Black Friday and Cyber Monday has not disappointed.
Just one week after topping $8,000 for the first time, Bitcoin priced passed $9,000 without taking a breath and kept heading up, topping the charts above $9,700 early Monday, and sitting at about $9,535 as of the time of writing.
The reasons for Bitcoin’s continued march vary from being a popular topic at the Thanksgiving dinner table leading previously skeptical or timid traders to give it a shot, which might at least in part account for the spike in new accounts opened at Coinbase over the past few days. The largest US Bitcoin exchange said that it added more than 100,000 accounts over Thanksgiving, bringing its total account base to 13.1 million.
But that only accounts for US interest in Bitcoin, which is just part of the story.
On a more global basis, the Black Friday-Cyber Monday shopping weekend has been a worldwide phenomenon, with retail clients spending more time shopping online – including buying Bitcoin. Bitcoin is likely to be a popular Christmas present this year, so don’t be too surprised if you get some cryptocurrency in your sock come the morning of December 25.
Another simple explanation is good old fear-of-missing-out, or FOMO. With story after story surfacing of Bitcoin millionaires and Bitcoin’s price march upward the stuff of front page news every few days, it seems like everyone including people who are not traditionally currency traders want a piece of the action.
Even were Bitcoin to continue its price march upward to $10,000 and beyond there are sure to be shakeouts here and there where the price drops suddenly and sharply. And, it isn’t too hard to envision a scene of mass panic and a rush to the exits, which has happened a few times already in Bitcoin’s relatively short history. So clearly, this is very much a case of buyer beware.
Many if not most Retail Forex brokers offer Bitcoin trading as well as Ethereum, Dash, LtieCoin and Bitcoin Cash. But these products are being offered with much less leverage than for traditional currency pairs, given the high level of volatility. Spreads are also much wider than for popular currency pairs.