Skip to main content

Bitcoin rises above $9,000, but can the market endure, or is it just a fad?

bitcoin stock
Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS/Getty Images
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies had a rough start in 2017, as values plummeted. Things may be looking up for the cryptocurrency industry, however, as Bitcoin has once again increased in value to more than $9,000. While that is still much lower than the lofty heights of last year’s Bitcoin boom, the fact that currency seems to be regaining some of its value will likely be seen as welcome news by those who invested in the coins.

In fact, some analysts believe that rather than being a passing fad, cryptocurrencies are just getting started. Ran Neu-Ner, who hosts CNBC Africa’s Crypto Trader, told CNBC on Friday that he believes that “we haven’t even got to the start line of cryptocurrencies.”

Neu-Ner,  whose own portfolio includes more than 40 different types of cryptocurrency, says that the technology isn’t truly ready for the mainstream just yet. He argued that the unscalable markets and difficulty in opening new crypto accounts can make it difficult for the general public to invest in cryptocurrencies.

He also added that he felt that many companies got in over their heads by investing in new cryptocurrencies without really understanding the underlying technology behind Bitcoin and others.

“Yes, there is a new digital gold, a new digital store of value,” Neu-Ner said. “I think bitcoin is the store of value. But the game hasn’t even started yet.”

Neu-Ner says that he believes we will soon see a mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies which will lead to a universal store of value. He admits that the market is rather volatile right now, but expects things to start trending upward later this year.

“I’m expecting the market to hover here for a little bit, a little bit nervous,” he told CNBC. “And then I’m expecting some kind of something to bring up a green candle, and that will start the momentum back up again.”

Despite Neu-Ner’s confidence in Bitcoin, no one can deny that general instability of cryptocurrencies make a lot of people nervous. Over the course of the past week, Bitcoin lost $125 billion in value thanks to a panic set off by fears surrounding stricter regulations on cryptocurrencies. For now, the future of Bitcoin and similar currencies remains up in the air.

Editors' Recommendations

Eric Brackett
Former Digital Trends Contributor
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more