Bitcoin rises again, setting another record

A single bitcoin BTCUSD, +3.11% gained 2.4% to $4,742.91 on Thursday, near the all-time high of $4,747.15 hit earlier in the session. So far this year, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has surged nearly 400%, having ended 2016 below $1,000. To compare, the S&P 500 SPX, +0.52% is up 9.8% over the same period.
At current levels, bitcoin has a market cap of $78.42 billion, larger than such companies as Starbucks Corp. SBUX, +0.48% and American Express Co. AXP, +0.48%

Despite the record, bitcoin trading has been extremely volatile this year, albeit with a strong upward bias. It recently dropped more than 10%, briefly putting it into correction territory before it subsequently rebounded. The moves come as the industry has tackled so-called scaling issues, which are intended to increase transaction sizes in the blockchain network. Traditional bitcoin participants have coalesced around a new protocol known as Segregated Witness, or SegWit., which they believe solves bitcoin’s scaling issue.

Ether, bitcoin’s chief rival, runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It rose 1% to $382.21, bringing its total market cap to $36.1 billion.

While Ether remains below its intraday record above $400, hit earlier this year, it has been a far stronger performer than bitcoin in 2017, having soared more than 4,600%. It ended 2016 around $8.

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Bitcoin Cash, an offspring created in response to bitcoin’s transaction-size issue, rose 5.1% to $594.11 on Thursday, bringing its market cap to nearly $9.8 billion. The third-largest digital currency has struggled lately, and it is down more than 30% from an all-time high above $860 hit on Aug. 19.

The combined market cap of all digital currencies is above $170 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, a pricing and data website. That means the asset class has grown by more than $20 billion in about a week; it topped $150 billion on Aug. 23, having broke above $100 billion in early June.