The bitcoin casino is open again.

The price of the digital currency has climbed as much as 50% this week, re-creating scenes from a manic 2013 run that took it from $13 to a high of $1,100 before it crashed.

The burst of speculative buying followed a spate of positive publicity and a move by the European Union to define bitcoin as a currency and not a commodity.

The hype and volatility around bitcoin, however, is overshadowing an uptick in more sober consideration of how its underlying technology—a sort of decentralized register of transactions—could be applied to traditional finance.

Bitcoin traded as high as $492 on Wednesday, well below its record but up about 50% from last Friday’s closing price. It fell back to roughly $430 in the afternoon.