The price for a single Bitcoin quoted on the Mt.Gox exchange hit $1,044 on Wednesday, double its level one week ago and 80 times the prevailing price at the start of the year.
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The media coverage and social media debate that has stoked the buying has intensified in recent weeks, as supporters claim Bitcoin could one day become an effective alternative to government currencies or a cheap way of moving money around the world.
Even sceptics accept that the price could continue to soar before any flaws in the concept become apparent.
“It’s a massively multiplayer online game,” said Jim Angel, professor at Georgetown University. “If you can guess where the crowd is going to go tomorrow, you can have some fun gambling here.
“But as a store of value it fluctuates too much and as an alternative to traditional payments systems it has got a lot of competition. There is also huge technology risk here. All it takes is one hack and, puff, it goes down to zero.”
Bitcoin was created in 2009 by an unknown computer scientist and transfers of ownership of the currency are recorded in software stored across a network of computers.
In depth
Increased trading in the decentralised virtual currency has begun to attract the attention of regulators
It is not backed by any central authority, so its value is derived only from speculators’ expectations of its future utility. A number of small businesses have begun accepting Bitcoin as payment, but usually convert the money back into government-run currency.
Regulators in the US and in China, the twin centres of speculative Bitcoin activity, have in recent weeks shown their willingness to let the experiment continue, as long as Bitcoin exchanges and brokers comply with anti-money laundering rules.
Jeremy Liew, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners of San Francisco, which has an investment in the largest Bitcoin exchange in China, said that the currency might have particular use in emerging markets with under-developed banking technology.
And he added that a Chinese penchant for speculation has been playing a part in Bitcoin’s exponential price rise. “It is no accident that Macau has a larger gaming industry than has Las Vegas,” he said.
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