Bitcoin Pulls Back from Record High Above $8,000
Investing.com - The price of the digital currency bitcoin rose was unable to hold the $8,000 level on Friday, after hitting an all-time high of $8,040.0, while bitcoin alternative Bitcoin Cash benefited with an 21% jump.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, Bitcoin was off 0.88% at $7,796.1 by 9:15 AM ET (14:15 GMT).
The largest digital currency by market cap has seen a wild ride this week after it fell as much as 29% over the weekend from its November 8 record high just shy of $7,900, before regaining ground.
The slump in prices came after the cancellation last week of a planned software upgrade that would have split the digital currency. The planned upgrade was opposed by bitcoin’s main software developers.
The upgrade, known as Segwit2x, would have roughly doubled the network’s processing capacity, or the number of bitcoin transactions the network can handle.
However, bullish sentiment returned after Square (NYSE:SQ) said Wednesday it was testing support for bitcoin to allow customers to buy and sell the digital currency through its payment app Cash.
The digital currency with a market cap just over $130 billion is still up slightly more than 10% in the last seven days.
Traders remarked that bullish sentiment in bitcoin had increased as CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) announced at the end of October that it would launch Bitcoin futures to provide a regulated trading venue for the digital asset market.
As bitcoin took a breather on Friday, traders shifted to offshoot Bitcoin Cash on Friday which surged 22.61% to $1,108.90 by 9:15AM ET (14:15GMT).
At current prices Bitcoin Cash has a total market capitalization of around $19.1 billion, making it the third most valuable cryptocurrency.
Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading, Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin, edged up 0.13% to $331.32.
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