Indexes appear to be offering differing accounts of just how high the price surge went – Coindesk puts the 24-hour high at just over $10,135. Yahoo Finance measured around $10,056 – and TradingView posted a high of more than $10,200.
In any case, analysts say they have established one of the main reasons behind the price increase, which has been described as “abrupt”.
Cryptocurrency traders have been making profits from other cryptocurrency coins – dubbed ‘altcoins’ – such as Ethereum.
CoinTelegraph explains there have been price slumps in these altcoin prices, suggesting investors are selling off and investing the profits in Bitcoin instead.
Finance expert Peter Brandt said on Twitter he expects Bitcoin prices to eventually reach as high as $50,000.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are types of virtual currency that do not rely on a central ‘bank’.
Instead, the value of each ‘coin’ is entirely dependent on market supply and demand, rather than any physical commodity.
Transaction history is also decentralised. This means every single Bitcoin transaction is stored on the computer of every single Bitcoin user, according to Bitcoin.org.
This transaction history is called the ‘blockchain’, and it has to be exactly the same on every computer used to buy or sell Bitcoin in order for the whole Bitcoin system to work correctly.
READ: Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Joe Biden and Kanye West ALL HACKED by evil Bitcoin scammers
Bitcoin made headlines recently after a large-scale hacking attack hit Twitter, affecting some of the social media platform’s most prominent users.
Accounts hit by the hackers included Elon Musk, Kanye West, Joe Biden, and Bill Gates.
All of the accounts appeared to post the same message: “I am giving back to the community. All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologised for the security breach in a call with Wall Street analysts last week.
Mr Dorsey said: “Last week was a really tough week for all of us at Twitter. We feel terrible about the security incident that negatively affected the people we serve and their trust in us.”
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency news site Decrypt reports a ‘White hat hacker’ called Harry Denley managed to return $16,000 worth of stolen cryptocurrency to its rightful owner last week.