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Frankfurt / Main (dpa) - The soaring of the digital currency Bitcoin continued on Sunday.
The price climbed on the Bitstamp trading platform to $ 28,378, which is the first time above the $ 28,000 mark.
He could not quite maintain this level, but was recently at around 27,000 dollars, well above the closing price on Saturday.
At other trading venues, of which there are numerous, the record highs can deviate, as there is no central Bitcoin trading.
This means that the price of the oldest and most famous cryptocurrency has increased by around $ 4,000 on the long Christmas weekend alone.
Bitcoin has risen by around $ 7,000 or around 35 percent since the end of November.
Bitcoin's soaring this year is breathtaking.
Started at around $ 8,000, the rate initially fell to less than $ 4,000 during the first Corona wave in spring.
After that, a slow rise began, which accelerated sharply in the fall.
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With a share of around 70 percent, Bitcoin is by far the largest digital currency.
Your market capitalization comes to a calculation by the provider of Coinmarketcap.com at around 500 billion dollars.
According to the site, all digital currencies together come to a little more than $ 700 billion.
This means that the asset class is still comparatively small in size despite the recent rally.
For comparison: The shares of the US technology company Apple are currently worth around 2.2 trillion dollars.
The rise in the price of Bitcoin this year is justified by several developments.
It is crucial that the topic of digital currencies has moved more into the focus of investors again.
This is not least a consequence of an advance by the large payment service PayPal, which wants to enable its customers to pay in digital currencies such as Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is also being boosted by the fact that more and more professional investors are interested in cryptocurrencies.
The interest of professional investors is often considered to be long-term, which could stabilize the very volatile Bitcoin price.
Interest in digital currencies is also being increased by the corona pandemic and the associated sharp rise in national debt.
For this reason, some investors fear rising inflation in the medium to long term, which they want to hedge against with alternative investments.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201227-99-824100 / 2