The price of bitcoin went through the roof Thursday, surging past $5,000 for the first time and, sitting at just below $5,800 by late evening, heading toward a cool $6,000.

Bitcoin’s price surge has been attributed to a number of possibilities, the most interesting being that investors are buying into bitcoin prior to two proposed forks in the cryptocurrency that may or may not occur before the end of the year.

The SegWit2x “upgrade,” a change to bitcoin that is the second stage of a previous change back in July, is claimed to assist bitcoin processing. However, it has not yet managed to gain the support of Chinese bitcoin miners, who account for roughly 30 to 40 percent of the global bitcoin market. “Bitcoin Gold” is the second proposed fork, one that essentially shifts bitcoin mining away from ASIC servers, those that use custom application-specific integrated circuits, and shifts the process of mining bitcoin back to graphics processing unit chips again.

Others are pointing toward Japan as a likely cause of bitcoin’s price rise, with Forbes attributing it to “a surging interest from Japanese investors and signs that proclaimed crackdowns in Russia and China will not be as severe as feared.”

Of note, other leading cryptocurrencies did not increase in price along with bitcoin, with the price of Ethereum remaining essentially static and other cryptos such a Ripple actually falling in value.

Whatever the reason for the surge, the new record highs for the world’s most popular cryptocurrency sends a clear message of bitcoin critics such as JP Morgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, who famously said in September that bitcoin was a “novelty,” “worth nothing” and a “fraud.”

Eating humble pie, perhaps, Dimon was reported to have said on Thursday that he was no longer willing to talk about bitcoin publicly, probably a wise decision given that his dubious comments have resulted in the company being sued. In Sweden, Dimon is accused of market manipulation due to “badmouthing bitcoin,” while other reports noted that despite Dimon’s words, JP Morgan Chase itself invests in bitcoin and bitcoin-related securities on behalf of clients as well.

Photo: Alex Carvalho/Wikimedia Commons