This fever due to bitcoin and the rest of cryptocurrencies has caused that, as of December 13, 2017, the market capitalization exceeds 500,000 million dollars
Bitcoin is the largest and most important application created to date under the 'blockchain' technology, a public database where the operations carried out with this cryptocurrency are verified. This decentralized protocol allows two people to exchange value anywhere in the world, in a secure (encrypted) and instantaneous way. It's a financial paradigm shift that, little by little, more and more users are seeing as possible.
The bitcoin (with lowercase b) is the cryptocurrency that makes that possible and that has reached a tremendous popularity in this last year. The existing euphoria is such that international media such as CNN, the 'WSJ' or the 'FT' are taking it on the front page day and day as well. And not only to talk about its price (which is what almost everyone looks at), but about its possibilities as an investment tool. Without going any further, on Wednesday the 'WSJ' published on the front page news about the increasingly feasible exit of the first ETF on bitcoin, already approved and quoting the first financial futures on the BTC.
The bitcoin is intended to be a monetary asset that allows that exchange or deposit of value and its price depends on the number of users who want to use it that way. In Japan, for example, cryptocurrencies are already considered as a means of payment since the beginning of 2017 and more and more businesses where payment is commonly accepted. If the number of people who use it increases its price increases in the same way, and that is just what seems to be happening if we look at the public data of Coinbase, which is just one of the many existing 'exchanges'.
