14 DAY TRIAL // Bitcoin has passed another milestone as it now trades at a brand new record high - $1,839, although it did manage to reach a peak of $1,853. The new spike comes after Russia's largest online retailer, Ulmart, announced that it would begin to accept Bitcoin.
"Ulmart started closely monitoring the market and regulatory environment for the use of crypto-currency in Russia as early as March 2014. As the blockchain technology is coming into our operations to fight counterfeit items, we see that the mystery that existed around the bitcoin three years ago has significantly receded," explained Dmitry Kostygin, the Chairman and majority shareholder of Ulmart.
Ulmart's announcement comes at a time when it's unclear just what the Russian government plans to do about Bitcoin. Officials have been discussing the matter for quite a while now, with the Central Bank saying that it would wait until 2018 to consider whether to allow the use of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
Record after record
Bitcoin has been doing some serious climbing over the past few weeks, breaking milestone after milestone. When it began its spectacular ascension, Bitcoin was trading at about $1,170 per coin. Nowadays, it feels like we're announcing a new milestone every other day, and that's great news for Bitcoin and those who bought early and may be making a nice profit.
Bitcoin has managed to succeed despite numerous hurdles along the years, particularly coming from governments across the world who do not like to recognize digital currencies because they cannot control them and see where they're going and who's using them.
In fact, Russia only plans to allow Bitcoin and other digital currencies if it has a way to link them to actual bank accounts so it knows whom they belong to. The country hopes to lower money laundering, which is quite the phenomenon there.