The price of bitcoin continued its meteoric rise on Sunday, surging past the $4,000 mark for the first time.
After pushing through as high as $4,200 earlier in the session, bitcoin was being traded at $4,078.08 while in the Asian markets bitcoin was up by 4.1% for the day. The price of bitcoin is up by more than 40% in the month of August, and has seen an increase of more than 280% just this year.
It first passed the $2,000 mark May, and topped the $3,000 for the first time in June. Bitcoin has zipped past a number of records in just the past two weeks, since the digital currency split and created the new currency which is the bitcoin cash.
The value of cryptocurrencies in general has risen to $11 billion in the market cap in just the past couple of days, according to Coinmarket.com, bitcoin’s previous record of $137 billion was up by another $66 billion which broke another record.
Asian investors were mostly the force that pushed bitcoin prices further up, as investors sought after safe havens as the heat between the U.S. and North Korea continue to spark tensions. The Japanese yen was behind for about 46% in Sunday’s global bitcoin trade volume while South Korea and Chine each made up about 12% in global volume.
Bitcoin’s weekend gains came at the expense of its rival digital currencies. Etherium’s ether was down by almost 5% and was traded at $295.42 on Sunday while Ripple was found losing almost 4% and Bitcoin Cash slipped by 4.3%.