Bitcoin has been trading on local exchanges at over R100,000 per coin as of this morning. At the time of writing, it was trading at R104,509 at Luno.com, South Africa’s highest volume Bitcoin Exchange.

Globally it is up 3.49% for the day and 18.45% in the last 7 days it has a market cap of around $109 Billion according to cryptocurrency market cap index website Coinmarketcap.com. According to coindesk.com price index Bitcoin is currently valued at $6586.58 which equates to R92,792.07.

Right now Bitcoin has been exchanging hands in South Africa at an 11.21% premium, there are a number of reasons for this. The main reason, however, is due to supply and demand and local exchange control and forex regulations which prevent exchanges of taking advantage of the international arbitrage opportunity.

Bitcoin is up 570% since January 1st this year and is up 62,500% in the last 5 years. If you invested R100 in bitcoin 5 years ago you would have approximately 6,25 million ZAR! Famously, The first recorded Bitcoin transaction was 10,000 Bitcoins for a pizza. In today’s value, 10,000 BTC equates to over 1 Billion ZAR!

Yesterday was the anniversary of the day that Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s anonymous creator/s, released the whitepaper to the world. Bitcoin has been on the up and up since it’s inception on October 31st, 2009.

Bitcoin is still considered by institutional investors as a highly speculative financial instrument but with total cryptocurrency market cap now exceeding 260 Billion ZAR, it is rapidly gaining recognition.

What do you think, is Bitcoin a speculative bubble or the future of money and finance? Leave a comment below.