Skip to footer

Is bitcoin making a comeback?

Bitcoin value fell dramatically early this year amid a string of controversies, reaching a low in April. But since then, the price of bitcoin has bounced back 80 percent. 

|
Mark Lennihan/AP/File
Bitcoin logos are displayed at the Inside Bitcoins conference and trade show, Monday, April 7, 2014 in New York. Since the price fell in April, Bitcoin's value has risen 80 percent.

At the beginning of this year, the controversial online currency bitcoin was facing problems. But since April, the price of bitcoin has begun to make a quiet comeback.

In late February of this year, Mt. Gox, the leading exchange for bitcoins, announced that it lost more than $400 million worth of customers' bitcoins and filed for bankruptcy. The fall of Mt. Gox caused a dramatic drop in the value of bitcoin. The currency, which once traded at $1,100, fell to just $360 in April. But the currency has started to make a comeback. By the start of the day Wednesday, the cryptocurrency was trading at more than $660, up 80 percent since April, according to CoinDesk. 

This rise in price comes in the same week that two more bitcoin-related websites found themselves in legal trouble. On Tuesday, Erik Voorhees, the co-owner of SatoshiDICE and FeedZeBirds, paid almost $51,000 to settle federal civil charges that he sold shares in the two sites without registering them with the Securities and Exchange Commission, though Voorhees denies he did anything wrong. 

Such legal woes have plagued the cryptocurrency since its popularity began to take off last year, but that hasn't stopped major companies from showing interest. Dish Network announced last week that it would begin accepting bitcoin payments, making it one of the largest companies so far to do so. Rapper 50 Cent will allow fans to use bitcoins to buy his new album “Animal Ambition,” released Tuesday. 

Even Apple has taken a small step in favor of bitcoin, announcing at its Worldwide Developers Conference this week that it would begin allowing apps that “facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with state and federal laws.” In other words, if bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies ever become accepted, legal forms of currency in certain parts of the world, Apple will accept them, too. 

Even with the controversy that constantly surrounds it, it looks like the currency is slowly beginning to regain investors' trust.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Is bitcoin making a comeback?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0604/Is-bitcoin-making-a-comeback
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe