(Bloomberg) -- The weekend is offering some respite for Bitcoin investors.
The bellwether of the cryptocurrency world rose 8 percent to $6,338.22 as of 5:30 p.m. in New York on Saturday, according to Bitstamp prices. The gain, which comes after the digital asset crashed through the $6,000 threshold last week for the first time since February, means the token has still lost about two-thirds of its value since reaching a record high of nearly $20,000 in December.
Saturday's rise marks a pause from the jarring decline through most of 2018. It follows the increase of more than 1,400 percent last year as Bitcoin exploded onto the mainstream. The peer-to-peer currency developed after the 2008 global financial crisis traded at as little as 30 cents at the end of 2010.
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While it's difficult to identify specific catalysts for Bitcoin's decline, the bursting of a speculative bubble may be at the heart of the matter as questions about the long-term viability of the virtual currency and price manipulation abound.
Bitcoin was “very much” a bubble, Robert Shiller, the Nobel laureate economist whose warnings about dot-com mania proved prescient, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television's Tom Keene on June 26. Last year's surge was “not a rational response.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Tom Metcalf in New York at tmetcalf7@bloomberg.net;Dave Liedtka in New York at dliedtka@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Andrew Dunn, Kenneth Pringle
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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