Investing.com - After two days of declines, Bitcoin logged another 24 hours of intense volatility with the range of prices from highs to lows settling once again above $1,000, while Ripple continued to surge.
Bitcoin rose 3.08%, or $428.00, on the Bitfinex exchange to trade at $14,344.00 by 9:33AM ET (14:33GMT). In the last 24 hours, prices have ranged from $13,333.00 to $15,131.00, or a range of no less than $1,798.
Wild swings in value are nothing new for bitcoin, which hasn’t seen an intraday range of less than $1,000 since December 5 when it was “just” $535 and ended flat on the day.
Bitcoin was trading higher on Friday after yet another heavy selloff a day earlier on the back of an announcement from the South Korean government announced that it would take several steps to combat speculation in digital currency trading.
South Korea is a key country for trading in the largest cryptocurrency by market cap as it is calculated that 20% of all Bitcoin transactions take place there and that its citizens own around 1 million bitcoins.
December has been a particularly tumultuous month for Bitcoin, after hitting its all-time high on December 17 only to proceed into a bear market with a plunge of around 46%, quickly followed by a recovery of about half those losses.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is still down 28% from its all-time highs reached less than two weeks ago.
However, and despite constant warnings that Bitcoin is a “bubble”, “fraud”, “Ponzi scheme” or the like, the popular alternative currency -which still has another three days left of trade this year- was on track for gains of 45% in December and a stunning rally more than 1,300% in 2017 after starting the year just below $1,000.
So far, cryptomania seems enough to offset what could easily be considered nail-biting volatility for any other investment.
Such is the acceptance of the wild moves, one cryptocurrency commentator suggested this week that nobody would even remember the recent plunge and talk surrounding Bitcoin conversations at New Year’s Eve parties would likely center on recent gains, more than 30% since the December 22 low.
While the debate continues to grow between hardcore fans and insistent detractors, regulators across the globe scramble to decide how to handle the decentralized currency and professional investors scrutinize the recently created Bitcoin futures to decide if the investment is worth the risk even as the blockchain technology that cryptocurrencies are based on gains traction, expert opinion for the 2018 outlook remains divided between a bursting of the “bubble” to a continuation of unprecedented gains.
Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading, Ripple soared to all-time highs on Friday and was last up 33.28% at $1.65800 on the Poloniex exchange. The cryptocurrency that was designed for banks and global money transfers with a more affordable price tag when compared to the Bitcoin leader has been riding Wednesday’s news that Ripple’s Asian subsidiary had formed a consortium with Japanese credit card firms to identify how blockchain and distributed-ledger technology can be deployed in credit-card payments.
Meanwhile, Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin, gained 6.18% to $738.08, while Bitcoin Cash -the result of the “fork” from the world’s largest digital currency on August 1 in a move that was designed to be able to process transactions more quickly at a lower cost- trailed competitors with a gain 1.00% to $2,443.20.