The price of bitcoin rose sharply on Monday against every major currency; on European exchange Bitstamp, the BTC/USD rate surged to an all-time high of $1425.00; and on Canadian exchange
QuadrigaCX, the digital currency traded against the Canadian dollar at a record high of $1980:
And on U.S.-based exchange Kraken, which has the highest-volume BTC/EUR pair in the world, bitcoin traded on Monday at a new all-time high of €1290.00.
Bitcoin’s exchange rate vs. the U.S. dollar on one of Asia’s top exchanges by volume, Bitfinex, rose to a record $1548.00 today.
However, international Bitfinex clients have been unable to withdraw fiat currency from Bitfinex since the beginning of April, when Wells Fargo & Company refused to process outgoing wires transfers from Bitfinex’s banking partners in Taiwan.
And there is rampant speculation on
Reddit that Bitfinex’s $120+ premium over other exchanges is a direct result of nervous Bitfinex clients panic-buying bitcoin to get their assets out of the exchange:
Additionally, since the end of March, Bitfinex’s
bitcoin reserves have declined by 50 percent.
Monday’s stunning bitcoin rally comes on the same day as ether, token of the Ethereum blockchain and the second-most valuable digital currency in the world, reached record highs of $81.30.
While ether’s meteoric rise above $80 pushed the market value of the digital token above $7 billion, many other Ethereum-based tokens like GNT (token of the
Golem decentralized computation network) and REP (token of the Augur decentralized prediction market), also rose to record valuations over the weekend.
According to charts from CoinMarketCap.com, GNT’s
market cap hit $198.22 million on April 30th, and the
market capitalization of the REP token rose to $206.74 million on Monday, May 1, 2017.
At press time, the combined market valuation of all digital currencies stands at $37.77 billion!
1000 CAD graphic by Brian.Ch
