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Summary
- Bitcoin achieved an all-time high of US$23,776.
- The surge in investor’s demand caused Coinbase and Binance to face technical outages.
- Coinbase is planning to go public to capitalize on high trading volumes.
On 16 December 2020, Bitcoin rose to the record high of US$21,569, surpassing the much-awaited level of US$20,000 for the first time in its history. However, the rally didn’t stop there and continued all the way to US$23,776 as of 17 December 2020.
Clearly, the bellwether of the crypto space is on a massive bull run and has risen by more than 15% in the last two sessions, surpassing it’s YTD return of massive 220%. In the last quarter alone, the Bitcoin has surged more than 100%, rallying from US$11,000 odd level to US$23,776. The rally is supported on the back of significant fundamental developments which are expected to take Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to the mainstream payment landscape.
Some of the major players and investors like Paypal, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey are increasingly notching up their stake on the future of the Bitcoin.
Currently, Bitcoin is trading almost 1% up at US$23,036.
Read More: Bitcoin At an All-Time High Outperforming All Asset Classes, Why are investors Gung-ho?
Exchanges suffered outages on high user traffic.
The spike in the popularity of Bitcoin amongst the masses, especially youngsters, has been reaching to the moon. The two popular cryptocurrency exchanges, namely: Coinbase and Binance had suffered technological issues the day Bitcoin surpassed US$20,000 mark.
Binance’s CEO, Mr Changpeng Zhao, related the issue to the unexpected surge in the users on the platform causing the malfunctioning of the servers. Mr Zhao also tweeted “Bitcoin goes up 5%, traffic goes up 30x”.
Coinbase also suffered technical issues on the same day. The CEO of Coinbase, Mr Brian Armstrong, has also said earlier that the exchange is working towards the upgradations to be able to handle high website traffic.
Coinbase looking to go public
The San-Francisco based crypto exchange has decided to tap the secondary market in the US to capitalize on the high trading volumes. It has already submitted a confidential draft to the US regulators; however, the details of the offer have not been made public.
Coinbase had already been well funded by private equity including US$100 million in Series D in 2017 and another US$300 million from Series E in October 2018. Some of the renowned VCs backing up the exchange are Tiger Global, DFG Growth among others.
