Few months ago, news about Bitcoin hit the headlines of financial newspapers. However, nowadays,the cryptocurrency is out of the coverage. According to the data of the largest markets, its exchange rate remains at the level of $300 which is only 18% of the highest value marked last spring. Back then, Bitcoin was a real sensation and was gaining in popularity as a payment means hitting the high of $1.145,000. Its success did not come unnoticed and several central banks, including those of Russia and China, said that the electronic currency threatened the economy. This announcement pushed Bitcoin down, and some stock exchanges that worked with Bitcoin went bankrupt. The MtGox scandal with missing funds also came as a blow. In this context, one may say that Bitcoin came to its end, but experts are not so sure. First of all, such turbulence is usual for cryptocurrencies that are highly volatile, thus a sharp rise may follow a sharp decline without a weighty reason. Secondly, the number of bitcoin users is growing steadily, and owners of web wallets and venture capitalists are sure that interest for this means of payment is going to increase. What is more, the cryptocurrency’s safety attracts Wall Street dealers who are used to trade large sums of money. Probably, that is why the Coinbase web portal managed to get a record amount of financing of $75 million. Among investors there were such companies as Andreessen Horowitz, FundersClub, IDG Ventures and other firms that will hardly invest in a failed project. However, there are skeptics like Izabella Kaminska at FT Alpaville who is sure that “unless a massive amount of new capital is transferred into bitcoin market sharpish — which is not impossible, since there are still a number of deep pocketed believers out there — it’s hard to imagine the asset class going any other way but south”.
