Bitcoin Tops $1,000 Again on Adoption by Zynga

January 8, 2014 Leave a comment

Bitcoin Tops $1,000 Again on Adoption by Zynga

The price of Bitcoin surpassed $1,000 again on the Mt.Gox exchange, after Zynga Inc. (ZNGA) said it would start accepting the virtual currency for some of its online social games as the digital money becomes more widely used.Bitcoins, which exist as software and aren’t controlled by any country or banking authority, surged to about $1,119 on the exchange today, one of several markets where they are traded for dollars, euros and other currencies.

Bitcoins first crossed the $1,000 threshold in late November and reached record at $1,238 on Mt.Gox on Dec. 4, but then plummeted to as low as $640 after China’s largest online market for the virtual currency stopped accepting deposits. The digital currency has rebounded as more merchants accept Bitcoins for everything from Gummi bears to smartphones on the Internet. Zynga is the latest merchant to accept Bitcoins, which can be used to buy virtual items in games.

“Bitcoin has been remarkably resilient in the face of all the bad news out of China,” Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, wrote in an e-mail. “The strength shows a continued interest, which is a very positive sign.”

Bitcoin was trading for about $13 a year ago, before wider acceptance and speculators drove prices higher. The rally gained steam in October, after regulators shut down the Silk Road Hidden Website, where people could obtain guns, drugs and other illicit goods using Bitcoins. That generated optimism the digital money would become more widely used. In November, law enforcement and securities agencies said in U.S. Senate hearings that Bitcoin could be a legitimate means of exchange.

Bitcoin Shopping

Dani Dudeck, a spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Zynga, confirmed a post introducing a plan to test Bitcoin payments by the company on the reddit.com community website. Players will be able to pay via the BitPay payments service for players of FarmVille 2, CastleVille and other games, Zynga said.

“We look forward to hearing from our players about the Bitcoin test so we can continue in our efforts to provide the best possible gaming experience,” Zynga said.

Victoria’s Secret Stores LLC has signed up with Gyft, an app that lets users buy gift cards with Bitcoins. Overstock.com Inc. plans to start accepting Bitcoins next summer, Chief Executive Officer Patrick Byrne said in an interview last month.

“We think there’s an underserved part of the market that wants to use Bitcoins and can’t,” Byrne said. The company needs time before it starts accepting Bitcoins in order to figure out how to process Bitcoin transactions and to hedge Bitcoin sales (the currency is highly volatile), he said.

Digital Money

Introduced in 2008 by a programmer or group of programmers going under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoins exist as software, which contain the rules governing their supply. New Bitcoins can only be created by solving complex problems embedded in the currency, keeping total growth limited. There are more than 12 million Bitcoins in circulation, according to Bitcoincharts, a website that tracks activity across various exchanges.

The virtual currency can also be traded without being tracked, potentially reducing banking-transaction fees and making it an attractive tender for those seeking to buy and sell via the Web or in stores.

“I think that as demand for investing in Bitcoin rises and friction in its markets is removed the price will continue to go up,” Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc., said in an e-mail. “The $1,000 mark does seem to be important level because it may dissuade the skeptics that emerged when Bitcoin prices took a big step down.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Olga Kharif in Portland at okharif@bloomberg.net

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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