$10,000 in sight for bitcoin as it rockets to new record high

LONDON - Bitcoin's vertiginous ascent showed no signs of abating on Monday, with the cryptocurrency soaring to another record high just a few percent away from $10,000 after gaining more than a fifth in value over the past three days alone.

The digital currency has seen an eye-watering tenfold increase in its value since the start of the year and has more than doubled in value since the beginning of October, lifted by the prospect of crossing over into the financial mainstream, amid a flurry of crypto-hedge fund launches.

It surged as much as 4.5 percent on Monday to trade at $9,721 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, before easing back to around $9,600 by 1155 GMT.

Data compiled by Alistair Milne, the Monaco-based manager of the Altana Digital Currency Fund, showed U.S. bitcoin wallet provider Coinbase added 300,000 users between Wednesday and Sunday, during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. The total number of Coinbase users globally now stands at 13.3 million.

"The Coinbase data is evidence that adoption is not slowing down," Milne told Reuters. "Breaking $10,000 seems inevitable following the recent price action."

Bitcoin's price has been helped in recent months by the announcement that the world's biggest derivatives exchange operator CME Group would start offering bitcoin futures. The company said last week the futures would launch by the end of the year though no precise date had been set.

So far, institutional investors have largely stayed away from the market, viewing it as too volatile, too risky and too complex to invest other people's money into. But some say the launch of the CME futures could lure in more mainstream investors.

"Promises of bitcoin futures opening the door to institutional money are supercharging the price," said Charles Hayter, founder of cryptocurrency data analysis website Cryptocompare.

BIGGER THAN WAL-MART

The latest price surge brought bitcoin's "market cap" - its price multiplied by the number of coins that have been released into the system - to more than $163 billion, according to industry website Coinmarketcap.

The market cap of all cryptocurrencies, meanwhile, topped $300 billion for the first time, the site said, making their estimated market value greater than that of Wal-Mart.

The staggering price increases seen in the crypto-market have led to multiple warnings from central bankers, investment bankers and other investors that it has reached bubble territory.

Some say that this could prompt regulators in the West to crack down on the market in a similar fashion to China, where bitcoin exchanges were shut down earlier this year.

"Regulators know the rewards of cryptocurrency and blockchain could be huge but (they) have more than one eye on the catastrophic ramifications if good governance, stability and control are not preserved," said David Futter, a fintech partner at law firm Ashurst, in London.

"If the carrot of self-regulation proves insufficient, the regulators will not hesitate to use their stick."

Bitcoin's biggest rival, ether - sometimes referred to as Ethereum, the name for the project behind it - has seen even more stratospheric gains this year, up more than 6000 percent. It hit an all-time high just below $500 on Monday, with its market cap nearing $50 billion.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Global Markets: Shares rally, dollar sags on slow-motion Fed

SYDNEY - Asian shares look set to rise for a sixth straight session on Thursday after the Federal Reserve left U.S. rates unchanged and plotted a lower trajectory for future hikes, slugging the dollar and boosting commodity prices.

Traders expected stocks to at least match the 1.1 percent gain enjoyed by the S&P 500. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was seen testing its recent one-year peak.

While Tokyo was on holiday on Thursday, stocks were boosted on Wednesday by the Bank of Japan's shift to targetting a positive yield curve, a move that was considered bullish for banks, insurers and pension funds.

The U.S. Fed did highlight the risk of a hike in December, but the forward guidance on rates - known as the dot points - left investors feeling any tightening would be glacial at best.

Market pricing for a December move rose only a fraction to 59.3 percent, from 59.2 percent, according to CME Group's FedWatch program.

Richard Franulovich, an analyst at Westpac, noted that back in June the median dot showed five hikes to end-2017. Now it was down to just three. The estimate of the long run neutral rate had also fallen 12.5 basis points to 2.875 percent.

"We do not feel that the dollar has the wherewithal to make a more concerted run higher in the next few weeks," he added. "The FOMC is unlikely to deliver anything more than a very 'dovish' December hike."

The dollar was down at 100.40 yen, having lost 1.3 percent on Wednesday to touch a 3-1/2 week low of 100.30. The euro had popped up to $1.1190, while the dollar index stood at 95.499 after easing 0.5 percent from a more than six-week high of 96.333.

CENTRAL BANKS STILL TRYING

The yen had gained broadly after the BOJ's shift to yield curve control - already abbreviated by the market to "YCC" - left some unimpressed.

"Fundamentally, it did not amount to an easing of monetary policy, but merely offers policy tweaks at the margin and a strengthening of forward guidance," said Frederic Neumann, co-head of economic research at HSBC.

"The BOJ now essentially promises to purchase JGBs for even longer, until inflation exceeds, and not merely meets, its 2 percent inflation target."

Another central bank struggling with too-low inflation is the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and it renewed a pledge to lower rates again on Thursday even as much of the domestic economy is growing briskly.

The RBNZ's blunt statement that further easing would be needed knocked the local dollar down half a US cent to $0.734, but the market has found it hard to sell a currency that still offers an overnight interest rate of 2 percent.

In commodity markets, gold traded at $1,332.36 an ounce, having climbed 1.6 percent as the US dollar declined.

Oil prices had climbed as much as 3 percent on Wednesday after a third surprise weekly drop in US crude stockpiles boosted the demand outlook in the world's largest oil consumer.

Another supportive factor was an oil workers' strike in Norway, which threatened to cut North Sea crude output.

U.S. crude (WTI) futures were up another 29 cents early Thursday at $45.63 a barrel. Brent crude futures had finished $1.17 higher at $47.05 per barrel.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com