Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-10-19
Bitcoin, the virtual currency that once made headlines with its high price fluctuations, has returned to its former status of being a niche alternative investment, the Chinese-language Securities Times reports.
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| A bitcoin ATM in Seoul, March 8. (File photo/Xinhua) |
Bitcoin, the virtual currency that once made headlines with its high price fluctuations, has returned to its former status of being a niche alternative investment, the Chinese-language Securities Times reports.
"Bitcoin
has truly become marginalized," said a manager surnamed Xie at a trust
company in Shenzhen who once owned 20 units of the online currency.
The surge
in the value of bitcoin to over US$1,000 per unit in the latter half of 2013
garnered public attention. Each rise and fall in its value made headlines, the
newspaper noted.
Although
the currency saw an intra-session fall of 23% on Oct. 5 and hit a low of
US$275, Xie stated that only few people still paid attention to it now because
of its marginalization.
All Xie now
hopes for is to get back the 20 bitcoins he had stored in the defunct trading
platform Mt Gox, which filed for bankruptcy in February.
Created in
2009, bitcoin was once believed to have the potential to replace traditional
currencies issued by governments. However, the involvement of regulators and
the emergence of other online currencies such as litecoin revealed the
uncertainties surrounding the virtual currency and dampened expectations.
The lack of
security and guarantee for bitcoin holders, the newspaper further remarked,
showed that investing in virtual currency remains a betting game.
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