The value of Bitcoin, a digital currency less than a decade old, has skyrocketed.One bitcoin is now worth around $2,430, according to World Coin Index.Demand for Grayscale Investments' Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC), the only vehicle of its kind tracking the cryptocurrency, has reached fever pitch, so investors who want a piece now will have to pay through the nose."GBTC is trading at a large premium to its underlying Bitcoin holdings as investors are eager to get long bitcoin exposure, but are wary of owning the actual asset," wrote Ihor Dusaniwsky, head of research at S3 Partners.Based on yesterday's close he estimates that GBTC is trading at a 106% premium.The XBT/USD cross rate was up 72% for May, but GBTC was up a whopping 248%.Earlier this year, investors were holding their breath to see if the SEC would approve the world's first exchange-traded fund tracking the price of bitcoin.Many said that if the Winklevoss brothers' application received approval, it would legitimize the cryptocurrency.

The SEC ended up denying the application and others like it."The main concern was that the market was not regulated," says Hossein Kazemi, CAIA senior advisor."It's a bad idea anyway.Bitcoin's appeal is anonymity and the fact that it lies outside of government control.An ETF would undermine that."Mass adoption is on the rise anyway.Japan recently announced that it would recognizs bitcoin as legal payment and Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson has emerged as its unlikely champion. reached out via email to Gavin Andresen, the man who built bitcoin, to ask some basic questions.Q: Does bitcoin really need an ETF?Andresen: No, no more than gold needs an ETF, but it would be a very convenient way for people to purchase and hold bitcoin.Q: The SEC's biggest complaint about bitcoin is the lack of regulation, but isn't that what makes it appealing?A: I haven't read the SEC's complaint, so can't really comment on which aspect of regulation they were concerned about.In general, there are lots of reasons people find bitcoin appealing.

Given that most people seem to be happy letting an exchange or wallet service store their bitcoin for them, and those exchanges and wallets ARE regulated, I think lack of regulation isn't the main appeal these days.A lot of people are interested in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as an different kind of asset they can own, uncorrelated with any of the other types of assets they might already own (stocks, bonds, real estate, etc).bitcoin valor hojeQ: Can regulatory crackdown in China destroy bitcoin?bitcoin transaction senderA: Bitcoin has thrived under the "regulatory crackdown" that has happened over the last few years here in the United States.bitcoin tax hmrcIt is mostly clear what the rules are for operating a bitcoin exchange here in the U.S., and when I do my taxes it is clear how to report gains or losses on bitcoin trades or transactions.bitcoin sandbox

It looks like China is taking a similar path, and I expect the rules for Chinese exchanges and citizens will be just as clear six months or a year from now.Q: Do people really need a digital currency?A: You could argue people don't need currency at all-- we could all use barter to trade with each other, and use real estate or precious metals for our savings.Using a common currency just works better; transaction costs are lower so it is much more efficient.ethereum elementPeople will use a digital currency when and where it is better than traditional currencies, or will hold it as an asset (hopefully as part of a diversified portfolio) if they think it might be more valuable in the future.kurs bitcoin plShare this article: Share this: Read Next Puerto Rico governor is searching for 'clarity' on $74B de... Puerto Rico governor is searching for 'clarity' on $74B de...bitcoin future scope

The big bitcoin conference Consensus descended on Manhattan this week, and a number of significant companies chose it as a venue to announce news.(The ability to own and oversee Consensus was one of the driving factors in the .)Most of the excitement about this industry at the moment, from the financial world, is around the use of , and less so on the currency itself.Banks and other payment giants are eager to explore how blockchain—but a closed, permissioned form without bitcoin, as opposed to the open, permissionless bitcoin blockchain—could speed up their transaction settlement processes.valor de bitcoin hojeMuch of the buzz and commentary at the conference matched this.bitcoin mine on raspberry piBut not all people in the industry are so eager to abandon bitcoin.Among lots of interesting news, here are 5 of the biggest stories to come out of the Consensus conference this week.It wasn’t an announcement made at the conference, but news that broke on the first morning, and it cast a shadow over the entire event.

, the mysterious creator of bitcoin, in a blog post and in statements to a few select news outlets.The mainstream media grabbed the story and ran with it, but among the crowds at Consensus, people doubted the claim.It only took a few hours for some experts to poke holes in the way that Wright supposedly proved he is Satoshi (he presented evidence that he owns the same private keys used by Satoshi for the first ever transaction), and now the story is looking like yet another entry on the long list of false positives.Don’t expect the media to lose interest in identifying Satoshi any time soon, even though , because it is open-source and has changed significantly since its inception.(There is one reason people in bitcoin want to know: Satoshi is believed to still hold nearly 1 million bitcoin, or about $450 million at the current price, which means he or she would have the power to crash the market by way of a selloff.)The state of Delaware announced it wants to use blockchain technology to speed the process of registering new businesses in the state.

It’s significant not only because government support of this space is so rare, but because Delaware incorporates more public companies than any other state.Bitcoin believers, of course, may scoff at this as another example of blockchain being used for something rather unexciting: improving an old institution’s dated IT processes.But Delaware going digital has major implications, since other states could follow.Jack Markell even said at Consensus that the state would consider creating a new form of “distributed ledger” shares in companies registered via blockchain.Chain, an enterprise blockchain startup, announced Open Standard 1, a form of blockchain it has built specifically for financial institutions, and a murderer’s row of launch clients along with it, including Capital One, Citi, Fidelity, Nasdaq, and Visa.To be sure, Chain is one of many competitors vying to build a blockchain for banks and other enterprise clients.The buzziest, in the mainstream business press, has been , but this week Amazon Web Services () also announced it would partner with the Digital Currency Group to offer a form of blockchain tech to enterprise clients.

Still, with a completed product and big-name backers, Chain could come out to an early lead in this race.21 Inc, which only one year ago was still a mysterious bitcoin startup that ($121 million, fittingly) without revealing what it would even do, came out swinging with the announcement of its next step.In February, 21 began shipping its first product, a small, sleek, personal bitcoin computer for mining bitcoin and building applications to accept bitcoin payments.This week, at Consensus, 21 CEO Balaji Srinavasan said the company’s next move is to “make every computer a bitcoin computer” by making its software compatible with any connected device.That means regular laptops and, eventually, mobile phones.This is a bitcoin innovation that should excite more than just bitcoin developers.“Every time you click a link,” Srinavasan told Yahoo Finance, “you could be earning money.” And you could do it without having to know how to mine bitcoin.It could lead to crucial solutions in an area like, say, news website paywalls.This one’s a double: Two big names in the finance world came out in a surprising show of support for the blockchain industry.

, gave an interview at Consensus in which he went all in on the potential of blockchain technology for Wall Street solutions.“Is the blockchain technology going to be fundamental?I think the answer is overwhelmingly likely to be yes,” he said.Unsurprisingly, he's not as bullish.However, he acknowledged that there are many who believe blockchain without bitcoin defeats the whole purpose, and lacks the excitement, of bitcoin, which is open and decentralized.“While there are arguments you can’t get all the benefits without bitcoin, my suspicion is that ways will be found to get those benefits without the uncertainty in the value of bitcoin,” he said.Glenn Hutchins, meanwhile, the founder of influential venture capital firm Silver Lake and a boardmember at AT&T, Nasdaq, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, appeared to do a 180 on bitcoin.Hutchins, in the past, had been dismissive of the cryptocurrency.But at Consensus, he delivered a speech on why bitcoin matters, even when the concept of bank blockchains is in vogue.