Bitcoin traded at a high of $788.49 on Tuesday amid a flight to safety after Chinese stock market jitters – the highest level in 3 years.
The previous 2016 high of $781.31 was achieved in the summer when traders prepared for a process known as “halving” – where the rewards offered to bitcoin miners fall, thus tightening the supply of the digital currency.
Chief executive of BTC China Bobby Lee commented that another boost to bitcoin was given by the Chinese yuan which has fallen against the U.S. dollar this year.
Major financial institutions have been talking about the digital currency world for the past year, but not because of the attraction of bitcoin, but for the underlying technology called blockchain. This is a distributed ledger which records every transaction made in bitcoin and cannot be tampered with. Distributed ledger technology is something that banks feel can be used in different areas from identity checking to asset trading.
Meanwhile, the company Blockchain has just shared that former Barclays CEO Anthony Jenkins was joining the board, in a move which is seen as validation for the technology. Peter Smith, chief executive of bitcoin wallet start-up Blockchain, commented that Jenkins will be key as Blockchain looks to scale its business.