Bitcoin surged 13% Monday, as traders decided that last weekās melodrama over Chinaās attempts to crack down on the digital currency werenāt such a big deal after all.
Bitcoin Investment Trust(GBTC), an ETF tied to the movements of bitcoin, jumped 12.7% to 710.30 in theĀ stock market today.
The currencyās value has plummeted in recent days on reports that China planned to halt bitcoin trading on domestic exchanges and had banned initial coin offerings, a form of digital-cash-based fundraising.
Whatās more,Ā JPMorgan ChaseĀ (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon last week called the currency āa fraud,ā while Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, said that bitcoin was overvalued and that governments were unlikely to āallow the amount of adoption that is currently priced in.ā
But on Monday, the sense among traders, apparently, was that Chinaās influence on the digital currency market might have been overstated.
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Aurelien Menant, CEO of Gatecoin, a token exchange,Ā told CNBCĀ that traders were ārealizing that it doesnāt really matter what happens in China anymore, the exchanges based there no longer dominate trading activityā.
He added that big investors in Europe, Japan and Korea were helping to drive what he said was the next bull cycle.Meanwhile, the Bank of International Settlements, in a quarterly review publication dated Sunday, suggested that central banks can no longer simply theorize about the possibilities of digital currency.
āWhether or not a central bank should provide a digital alternative to cash is most pressing in countries, such as Sweden, where cash usage is rapidly declining,ā it said. āBut all central banks may eventually have to decide whether issuing retail or wholesale (central bank cryptocurrencies) makes sense in their own context.ā