BitCopin’s Ups And Downs

Bitcoin has staged a dramatic comeback over the last 24 hours, with its price edging towards the $1,000 mark for the first time since mid-December, propelled by the news that several major businesses have begun accepting the cryptocurrency as a means of payment.

The most important of these was online games company Zynga, which said over the weekend it’s to start ‘testing’ payments in Bitcoin for seven of its most popular games. This follows last month’s announcement that Overstock, one of the world’s biggest online retailers, would also start accepting Bitcoin in 2014.

Zynga announced its embrace of Bitcoin via a post on Reddit, saying that it would work with Bitpay to process the transactions.

Here’s Zynga’s full announcement:

“We wanted to share with the r/bitcoin community that Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA) is now conducting a Bitcoin test with BitPay (https://bitpay.com/), a leading Bitcoin service provider, in select Zynga.com web games.

In response to Bitcoin’s rise in popularity around the world, Zynga, with help from BitPay, is testing expanded payment options for players to make in-game purchases using Bitcoin. The Bitcoin test is only available to Zynga.com players playing FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows and CityVille. The games can be accessed at http://zynga.com.

Zynga is always working to improve our customer experience by incorporating player feedback into our games. We look forward to hearing from our players about the Bitcoin test so we can continue in our efforts to provide the best possible gaming experience.

Check out the test and let us know your thoughts.

Thank you!

Zynga”

The announcement triggered a rapid rise in the price of Bitcoin, and it’s now close to the $1,000 value it held last month. At the time of writing, BTC is priced at $997.94 as a weighted average across multiple exchanges, according to Bitcoinaverage.com.

The milestone completes a rapid turnaround for Bitcoin, which first hit a $1,000 valuation at the tail end of November, 2013. This was followed by a dramatic slump that begun following rumors (later confirmed) of a crackdown on Bitcoin exchanges in China. It’s believed the massive surge of Chinese investors is what drove BTC’s original price gain, but after authorities banned payment processors from funding exchanges like BTC China, the price of the cryptocurrency crashed as rapidly as it rose, hitting a low of $506 on December 18.

Since then, Bitcoin has picked itself up, dusted itself off and gone from strength to strength on the back of several high-profile announcements. As well as Zynga and Overstock, rapper Snoop Dogg and Congressman Steve Stockman have both endorsed the cryptocurrency, whilst Fortress Investment Group separately announced it was starting its own fund in BTC.

Here’s the current price chart, courtesy of Bitcoinaverage.com:

Main photo credit: zcopley via photopin cc