The price of popular digital currency bitcoin is up again after the U.S. markets dipped amid President Donald Trump’s recent executive decisions.
Bitcoin started the new year on a rather high note, reaching $1,140.64 in early January—its highest since November 2013. The dramatic rally, however, came to an abrupt end when the digital currency’s price plummeted to $885.41 following reports that the Chinese government is eyeing to introduce cryptocurrency regulations.
A lot of things happened since then: China’s central bank inspected three of the largest bitcoin exchanges in the country—BTC China, OKCoin and Huobi—which led to a discovery of “irregularities” in the operations that the government said caused bitcoin’s recent volatility. This, in turn, prompted the companies to overhaul their practices, which included introducing a 0.2 percent trading fee per transaction to all of their users. Since then, the market has returned to normalcy, and bitcoin’s price slowly recovered.
Now, that recovery appeared to be boosted further by the recent developments in the United States. Last Tuesday, bitcoin’s average price hit a high of $959.37 following news of Trump signing an executive order that bans citizens of seven countries from entering the U.S. over the weekend. Trump is also reportedly considering making changes in the H-1B visa regime, which caused the value of the U.S. dollar to drop.
Trump’s move was sudden but not unexpected. After all, he had promised the restrictions during his campaign. However, the indiscriminate nature of the ban had raised questions about the new president’s commitment to the rule of the law as well as the competence of his team. And it also didn’t come as a surprise that Trump’s decision has increased uncertainty on the U.S. economy.
The U.S. market is expected to recover, but the political uncertainty will continue to affect the country as well as the global markets—and this could work in bitcoin’s favor. Trump is already predicted to help boost the price of digital currency by as much as 165 percent.
Current bitcoin price
Bitcoin’s price rose to $977.52 early Wednesday morning.
