The price of bitcoin crossed the threshold of $ 15,000 on Thursday, a first in nearly three years, confirming the return to favor of cryptocurrency for several months.
Around 5:05 p.m. GMT (6:05 p.m. in Paris), bitcoin jumped 8.30% to $ 15,171.63.
The cryptocurrency had not crossed the symbolic threshold of $ 15,000 since January 9, 2018.
The rise is part of a rebound that began in mid-March, when bitcoin was worth less than $ 4,000, so many analysts attribute the comeback to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world.
This is prompting massive responses from central banks who keep their interest rates very low.
As a result, some investors are turning away from traditional physical currencies and approaching bitcoin no longer as a means of payment but as a kind of "digital gold".
In fact, the yellow metal also climbed more than 2% Thursday to nearly 1950 dollars an ounce around 4:45 p.m. GMT (5:45 p.m.) in Paris.
To explain the rise in bitcoin, Naeem Aslam, analyst at Avatrade, further observes that “more and more companies are adopting bitcoin. "
At the end of October, the online payments service Paypal announced the launch of a service allowing "to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies", causing a first rise in the price of bitcoin to its highest in one more time. a year.
When it was created in 2008, bitcoin was presented by its inventor, an anonymous known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, as a possible alternative to existing online payment methods.
Very volatile, it climbed to nearly $ 20,000 in December 2017 before falling. It is not legal tender and is not issued by a central bank
