Bitcoin price reaches highs of $460 after narrow price fluctuations over the last few weeks
The bitcoin price has rallied over the last few days to highs of $460 within the last 24 hours.
At 11.30am (GMT) the price of bitcoin was $458.92, but spent much of the morning at $460 or above.
A small rally occurred over the past week, which began on Thursday when the price of bitcoin surpassed $448 for the first time in around two months, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index. The price last hit an inter-day high of $448.29 on 21 February. Last Friday, the price broke $450.
For most of the last month, the price of bitcoin has stayed in a narrow, stable range of between $410 and $430.
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Bitcoin analysis hub CoinDesk has attributed the recent stability to market observers standing back to see if the bitcoin community would make any progress on some of the underlying issues facing its technology.
Andrew Wingfield, corporate partner at King & Wood Mallesons, said:
Bitcoin’s bullish price may well be due to the distributed ledger that bitcoin builds upon known as the blockchain. While there are a few misconceptions that may overstate quite how disruptive blockchain technology could be and how long it could take to be realised, some of the excitement over blockchain is justified. This is because the distributed ledger technology is an interesting development, and could help banks reduce costs.
Despite the price rise, investment bank and asset managing firm Needham & Company said bitcoin has been undervalued by around $200, and should have a trading price $655.
Bitcoin was the world's best-performing currency in 2015, beating out the US dollar by nearly 40 per cent. Bloomberg dubbed it the "comeback of the year", after it was 2014's worst-performing currency when it also lost 57 per cent of its value against the dollar.