Bitcoin Price Hits a New High as the Virtual Currency Grows in Popularity

It’s pretty clear that U.S. federal officials hoped Bitcoin
would dry up and blow away when they
busted the Silk Road drug marketplace, but that’s not what
happened. That’s because, as anybody clued-in (like our own Brian
Doherty) could have explained, Bitcoin is
useful for so many more things than purchasing illegal
intoxicants on the Internet, not that there’s anything wrong with
such transactions. In fact, Bitcoin briefly hit an all-time high,
price-wise, relative to U.S. dollars just today. The Mt. Gox exhange recorded Bitcoin as
touching $272 at one point (the solid line in the chart below is
volume; the broken line is price). As it turns out, Bitcoin isn’t
quite ready to go away, and people aren’t losing interest.

Among the companies newly adopting Bitcoin payments is
Tomcar Australia, a manufactirer of all-terrain vehicles that
hopes to ease international sales by using the virtual
currency.

Bitcoin has also become
attractive for tech-savvy international investors intrigued by
the virtual currency’s resilience, and the fact that it can be
manufactured only in finite quantities—unlike the U.S. dollar.
Interestingly, the biggest Bitcoin exchange is now, apparently,

BTC China, which just pushed past Mt. Gox and Bitstamp in
volume. Bitcoin has apparently become popular in that country as a
store of value, since few businesses actually accept payment in the
currency.

Bitcoin is unlikely to be the final development,
virtual-currency-wise. Use of Bitcoin still raises some privacy concerns,
though following payments
remains difficult if people make an effort to cover their
tracks. But with virtual currency growing in popularity,
improvements and new developments are guaranteed.