Tag: CME Group

As bitcoin raced to another record high on Tuesday, one of the biggest providers of digital currency wallets, Coinbase, went down under the weight of traffic, leaving many of its more than 10 million customers unable to access their funds. At the same time, Bitfinex, the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange by trading volume, said it was under a heavy denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, meaning its servers had been intentionally flooded with junk online requests, taking down its website and crippling its services. The latest outages show how the market infrastructure for an immature and volatile instrument that millions of investors have piled into may be ill-equipped to cope with sudden shifts in demand, which is worrying some investors. During a particularly volatile period of trading ...

Bitcoin rocketed to a lifetime high well above $16,000 on Thursday after climbing some 67 percent over one week, intensifying the debate about whether the cryptocurrency is in a bubble about to burst. The largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange struggled to keep up with record traffic as the price surged, with an upcoming launch of the first bitcoin futures contract further fuelling investor interest. Proponents say bitcoin is a good medium of exchange and a way to store value, much like a precious metal. Those that buy bitcoin also argue it is preferable to traditional currencies because it is not subject to central bank manipulation. The supply of bitcoin will eventually be capped at 21 million, and some 16.7 million have already been released. But critics say that the price run-up is a b...