Bitcoin Price Has Tripled Since Last Year and reached the highest level observed at any time
Since April 2016 when the price of bitcoin was around $420 on all major exchanges, over the period of 12 month bitcoin price has tripled and reached its all-time high surging $1,411 on British Virgin Islands-based Bitfinex on 26 of April. Now the price is stably higher than 1300$. Last time the currency showed similar rise was in the beginning of March when it reached $1350 on Bitstamp.
However in spite of joy of bitcoin enthusiasts, we should not forget that bitcoin on Bitfinex was trading more than $130 higher than it was on OKCoin, nearly $100 above its price on Kraken and roughly $90 higher than Coinbase's GDAX exchange.
Notably, the cryptocurrency's price on Bitfinex was also trading more than $100 above the price of the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI), an index from which it was recently suspended.
On the one hand bitcoin price is railing in spite of the banking challenges and drama going around bitcoin, but such price ramp on Bitfinex brings concerns among the ecosystem.
According to the words of BTC VIX the organizer of bitcoin trading community Whale Club, there are now concerns Bitfinex "may never have access to USD clearing again", and that this was creating a "Bitfinex premium" in the market. He states that the result has been heightened bitcoin buying amid concerns that access to fiat funds at exchanges could decline.
Rather, it is likely that the arbitrage in the US market caused by Bitfinex and other exchanges inability to process withdrawals and deposits in fiat money is causing Bitcoin price to increase at a rapid rate.
There are also several reasons for the rapid growth in bitcoin price.
First off on 25 of April a statement was made that The SEC intends to review its decision to reject a bitcoin exchange-traded fund proposed by investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The commission accepted a petition submitted by BATS Global Markets and began a one month process to review the proposal of the COIN ETF once again. So most analysts seem to believe that the recent surge in Bitcoin price was caused by the SECs.
Secondly the probability of hard fork seems distant and unlikely, though it seemed quite probable in recent past and managed to cause the price for bitcoin fall to 900$
If we talk about the constant growth of bitcoin price in future, there are 2 key factors. The first one is India. India is considerd to be one of the most important bitcoin markets because of the countrys poor banking system, declining financial platform and weak infrastructure. Local analyst say that according to their research more than 40% of Indians remain to be unbanked. Recently, the demonetization of 500 and 1,000 bank notes initiated by the Indian government led to a nationwide financial crisis, as banks and ATMs ran out of cash to dispense. Both the banked and unbanked populations of India have been struggling to obtain cash to fund day-to-day operations and basic necessities ever since. By early 2016 Indian exchanges such as Zebpay and Unocoin began to see a spike in their user base and trading volumes. Many predict that bitcoin will be legalized in India by the end of May, following the example of central banks of the Philippines and Japan.
If Bitcoin is legalized by Indian authorities if would achieve a mainstream adoption among the locals and millions of new users from India emerge as a result, Bitcoin price will likely surge in the mid-term.
As for Japans legalization of bitcoin, this is considered to be another factor of future growth of bitcoin price. As the Japanese government continues to print large amounts of money, the inflation rate of the Japanese yen will likely increase proportionally and the value of the Japanese yen will likely fall in the mid-term. Analysts expect that such performance of Bitcoins largest exchange market could potentially affect the Bitcoin price.