The price of bitcoin rose nearly $30 over one hour of trading today, spiking to $740 as it continued to test 2016 highs.
The sudden boost followed a relatively slow uptick over the course of recent trading sessions, with the price fluctuating between $706 and $713 from 0:00 UTC on 15th November to 12:00 UTC today, figures from the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index reveal.
However, that would soon change as the price began rising quickly, spiking nearly 4% over the course of just 60 minutes today.
Speculation on social media credited the boost to a weakening of China's yuan, a theory that is supported by the fact that China-based bitcoin exchanges continue to account for the lion's share of trading, but that perhaps lacks credible anecdotal evidence.
Equally possible is that the uptick was driven by low liquidity in the bitcoin economy and sudden surge in demand.
As profiled in CoinDesk, experts believe a number of recent price spikes could have been caused by single traders due to a lack of market depth. At press time, a representative of the bitcoin trading community Whale Club suggested rumors of a 500,000 BTC order at an exchange may have caused the uptick.
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