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Turkish football has created history by using Bitcoin to complete a transfer for the first time.

Harunustaspor have used the cryptocurrency to sign Omer Faruk Kiroglu for 0.0524 BTC (£386), plus 2,500 Turkish Lira (£467) - making the total deal worth 4,500 Turkish Lira (approximately £850).

One Bitcoin is currently worth at the time of writing £7,367 and club president Haldun Sehit has revealed his pride at being part of the historical transaction.

“This is a first in Turkey and the world," Sehit is quoted as saying by Turkish Football.

"We are proud of this achievement and know it will raise our profile here [Turkey], internationally and among the community [crypto].”

Kiroglu himself was pleased to be part of the experience and hopes his move to the Sakarya First Division Group B and is proud to be a part of history.

(Image: Getty Images AsiaPac)

“I hope it works out for both sides," Kiroglu said.

"It is a first for myself, a first in the world. It is an honor and as the boss said it is innovative. This is the future. As someone open to new technology it made sense."

Bitcoin, created in 2009 by a mystery person using an alias Satoshi Nakamoto, is the first decentralised currency, enabling it to operate without a central bank or administrator.

The peer-to-peer system enables users to verify transactions using cryptography, with all records available on a public ledger known as a blockchain.

Why everyone's talking about Bitcoin - what it is, what's changed and is it time to buy?

It's been with us a while, but it's only in the past week everyone's been talking about Bitcoin .

In fact, more people are now searching for ways to buy Bitcoin than buy gold, five times as many in fact .

Why? Well it's all about the price.

Bitcoin - essentially a tradeable piece of computer code - has been going up in price faster and faster for most of the year, but in the past week things have gone stratospheric.

One one side you're seeing records broken left right and centre and people cheering, and on the other you've got people grabbing popcorn, settling in and waiting for an almighty crash.

In just 20 minutes this morning, for example, Bitcoin's price rose $2,000 to more than $17,000 each - then fell $2,000 to $15,000 according to the CoinDesk platform.

For context, it took 3 years to even get close to being worth $1,000; another 4 years to be worth $2,000; three months to hit $3,000 but just 5 minutes to add $1,000 last night. Then it collapsed, losing $2,000 almost as fast.

Bitcoin price Souce: Coinbase prices, correct as of Jan 17, 2018

What happens next

The short answer is "we don't know". That's also the long answer.

On one side people are arguing that it needs to go up in price to become a real currency. On the other you have people asking why now? As well as questioning whether it's actually worth anything at all.

There are literally hundreds of Bitcoin-like cyber currencies, two of them directly based on Bitcoin, and it's the only one to see values like this. Each Bitcoin is worth ten times as much as the next most valuable coin, and 20 times as much as the third most valuabe.

Whether this is a move to establish Bitcoin as the dominant one, or just wild speculation because it's the only one people have heard of, only time will tell.