Bitcoin Cracks $2,000

Amid volatility, has bitcoin broken through a psychological barrier? The cryptocurrency traded above $2,000 on a per coin basis for the first time.

The pricing, reports TechCrunch, comes from data gathered across a range of exchanges, such as Kraken.  The total value of all the bitcoins in circulation, said the site, comes in at just under $33 billion. The $2,000 mark represents a doubling since the end of last year, and TechCrunch noted that other cryptocurrencies, including Ripple, have been gaining steam too, while ethereum, tied to blockchain, has seen its own market capitalization double twice, to a recent $12 billion, in just the past month.

This means that bitcoin, though a marquee name for digital currencies, remains less than half the market cap of all of these alternative currencies, where once it was more than 80 percent.

One reason posited by TechCrunch as to why bitcoin has seen catchup by other players in the market: Scale, as there have been numerous reports about inefficiencies in transaction confirmations. Miners have had problems agreeing on which protocols should be the ones in place for creating and controlling the currency.

Bitcoin also got some negative spin last week as it was revealed that the demand for payment for ransomware fizzled, netting only thousands of dollars in payments.