REUTERS/Bobby Yip

Bitcoin, the scorching-hot digital currency, cleared $10,000 a coin on Tuesday.

The digital currency, which many Wall Streeters have said is in a massive bubble, is up more than 875% this year.



Bitcoin, the red-hot digital currency, has cleared $10,000 for the first time.

The virtual currency, which has gripped the attention of Wall Street and Main Street, reached the much-anticipated threshold at about 1:26 p.m. ET on Tuesday, according to data from Markets Insider. It's trading up 2.85%, at $10,011 a coin.

The currency was flirting with $10,000 throughout the trading day on Tuesday, and has been on a tear since the US Thanksgiving holiday. It's up more than $2,000 since Thursday's low of $7,979 per coin.

Bitcoin has been on a wild ride this year. In addition to rising nearly $9,000 since the beginning of the year, the cryptocurrency has withstood a number of splits in its blockchain, including one in August that resulted in the creation of clone coin bitcoin cash. Disagreements over how the coin should scale continue to divide power brokers in the bitcoin community.

Wall Streeters, including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, have derided the cryptocurrency as only useful for criminals. In September, Robert Shiller, one of the most renown economists in the world, said bitcoin was "the best example of a bubble."

Still, a number of Wall Street firms have warmed up to bitcoin. Most notably, CME and Cboe, two exchange giants for futures and derivatives, are set to roll out bitcoin futures. And a number of trading firms including Virtu, DRW, and B2C2 are set to provide liquidity for such markets.

As for the coin's future, many think 2018 will be the year in which traditional financial-services firms pour into the market, which has been dominated mainly by smaller firms and scrappy traders.

"2018 is the year when things start moving with regards to institutions moving into the market and dominating it," Bartek Ringwelski, the US COO of bitFlyer, a Japan-based bitcoin exchange, told Business Insider.

Markets Insider

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