Bitcoin value skyrockets, cause unclear

Don't look now, but everyone's favorite crypto-currency is creeping back up the charts again. Over the past two weeks the value of a bitcoin has skyrocketed from just over $200 to just shy of $450.

And it's not entirely clear why.

Baidu, the "Chinese Google," started accepting bitcoin for some of its security services in October, which given China's population may have something to do with the increase. The services are niche cloud computing applications, but those with a longer view may assume the company will start accepting bitcoin for more common services, thus increasing its legitimacy.

Either way, a lot of people clearly have some level of confidence that the currency will keep growing in value. Anyone can buy bitcoin by going to an exchange like Mt. Gox (which has had its own problems) and forking over fiat currency for the equivalent amount in bitcoin. As demand increases, so does the exchange rate.

Some brick-and-mortar retailers have started accepting bitcoin. It has been used to pay the homeless. Blogging platform WordPress accepts bitcoin for its services.

But as with anything digital, buyer beware. The currency has had a roller-coaster journey in the last year. In April, its exchange rate climbed to around $230 before plummeting over the course of a week to around $70.

In September, perhaps the largest illegal marketplace on the deep Internet was closed down after the arrest in San Francisco of Ross Ulbricht, the accused mastermind. However, even though Silk Road accepted only bitcoin and was believed to have exchanged about $1.2 billion worth, the currency's exchange value didn't seem to be affected by the shutdown.

Sometimes called a virtual currency or a math-based currency, bitcoin was created by an anonymous developer (or group) called Satoshi Nakamoto and has long been heralded as a savior for those exhausted by the regulated nature of traditional currencies. Bitcoin users exchange cryptological "keys" - long strings of random characters - to consummate transactions, and due to the integrated nature of the math that connects them, the entire bitcoin community logs the transaction. Bitcoin "miners" unlock the currency at rates governed by the (usually) predictable increases in computer processing power. The currency is almost impossible to track and has given law enforcement fits in hunting down the culprits of illegal transactions online.

At this point, what we do know is that bitcoin certainly isn't done making headlines.