Bitcoin goes above $6,000 for the first time this year

If you thought that the theft of 7,000 bitcoins from one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges would stop Bitcoin’s price in its tracks, you were wrong. 

On Thursday, the price of Bitcoin went above $6,000 for the first time since November last year. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $6,102.64 according to CoinMarketCap. 

The Binance hack — made worse by the company CEO Changpeng Zhao’s short-lived suggestion to change Bitcoin’s history to undo the hack — wasn’t the only recent bad news for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. In April, news broke that China is considering banning cryptocurrency mining in the country. Later that month, cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and stablecoin Tether were accused by the New York Attorney General of covering up an $850 million loss of customer funds. Last week, famous investor Warren Buffett slammed Bitcoin for being useless, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz suggested cryptocurrencies should be “shut down.”

There was good news as well; in April, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase opened shop in several key markets, including Argentina, India, Indonesia and Mexico. And earlier this week, a report said investment giant Fidelity is looking to launch a crypto trading product. 

But Bitcoin being Bitcoin, it largely ignored news and just kept pumping. It’s still a long way since its Dec. 2017 highs of nearly $20,000, but the recent price gains are reminiscent of 2017, when the price kept rising no matter what happened (right up until mid-December). 

Other major cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum and XRP, have also experienced price growth in the last 24 hours, but the gains were much more modest. Ethereum rose 0.81% and is currently trading at $171.49, and XRP rose 0.28% to its current price of $0.300681. 

Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH.