The value of Bitcoin has reached extremities over the last year, with many highly controversial events having generated huge demand followed by complete uncertainty.
It is never entirely possible to ensure that the days of virtual currency exchange failure which relieved investors of the entirety of their Bitcoins with no recourse or governmental discourse against the use of Bitcoins will ever subside due to the nature of its operating outside of the traditional system, just as much as it could perhaps not have been predicted a few years ago that a banking crisis in Cyprus, and draconian capital control laws in nations such as Argentina and China would generate spiraling demand.
Indeed, last year was a year in which values of Bitcoin soared from $70 to one, to over $1000 to one, and then down again, due partly to some of the aforementioned events.
Is any form of stabilized prices drawing near? A report by CNBC considers that a potential reality, stating that its values are up more than 80 percent from its April lows on a wave of good news and wider acceptance.
The Bitcoin2014 Conference in Amsterdam drew to a close three days before the upswing started, and it featured some positive outlooks for the cryptocurrency from its 2,000 attendees, which is more than the meetups last year in Buenos Aires generated, despite Argentina being a nation which embraced Bitcoin for every day transactions due to strict capital control laws and the banning of the US dollar by the Kirschner administration, resulting in Bitcoin values in Argentina being 30 to 40% higher than values in neighboring Uruguay.
“The fact that you have 51 countries (represented at the conference) and all of them have something positive to say about developments in their countries—maybe this helped show that bitcoin is bigger than just the U.S., China and England,” said Micky Malka, a general partner at venture capital firm Ribbit Capital and a board member of conference host Bitcoin Foundation.
Mr. Malka said he has seen an increased interest in bitcoin over the past few months in the Silicon Valley venture capital community. An average round of funding for a bitcoin-related company drew in $1 million or $2 million in 2013, he said, but now routinely exceeds $20 million.
Last week, Dish Network became the largest company to accept bitcoin payments. Payment processor Coinbase will handle the cryptocurrency for Dish, instantly converting bitcoins into dollars to eliminate price volatility concerns for the satellite TV company.
And the latest news of bitcoin acceptance comes from a potentially unlikely source: Rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who is reportedly accepting the currency for his new album “Animal Ambition.”
Furthermore, LeapRate reported this week that Apple Corporation has amended its terms and conditions in order to accept Bitcoin applications, taking the virtual currency further into the mainstream.
A large part of George Orwell’s dystopian outlook some sixty-five years ago when he published his insightful prediction into the future in his novel “1984” featured what he considered to be the terrifying prospect of a cashless society. Indeed, just five years ago, the general investing public would likely be equally alarmed if virtual, peer-to-peer electronic currency could be positioned to provide a real alternative to fiat currency, however in some parts of the investing world, widespread acceptance is prevailing.
