Investing.com – The recovery in Bitcoin gathered momentum on Tuesday after the popular digital currency rose sharply paring recent losses as it looks to end the year on a bullish note.
On the Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin rose to $15,560.9, up $1680, or 12.09%, after recently hitting an all-time high of $19,891. The popular digital currency's market cap rose to $269.54 billion.
Bitcoin is well on its way to reversing the losses it suffered following its dramatic nearly 50% six-day slump last week which saw the popular digital currency fall to a two-week low of $10,718 on Friday.
The rebound in bitcoin comes amid growing concerns from regulators as Israel Securities Authority chairman Shmuel Hauser said Monday he will propose regulation to ban companies based on bitcoin and other digital currencies from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Bitcoin's revival has given rise to investor hopes that the launch of bitcoin futures on the both the CME group and CBOE exchanges would usher in a period of institutional demand, establishing bitcoin as an established asset class.
Despite the year-end blip in bitcoin, the popular digital currency boasts a return of more than 1600% since the start of the year, outpacing the returns of the traditional benchmarks like the S&P 500.
With bitcoin seemingly back on track to trend higher, other cryptocurrencies followed suit as Ripple XRP rose 1.28% to $0.984.
The recent rise in Ripple comes amid reports that banks in Japan and South Korea began tests of Ripple’s digital payments technology.
Bitcoin cash rose 1.12% to $2791.1, after surging above $4000 to a record high of $4,100 last week. Bitcoin Cash was created in August following a split in Bitcoin’s blockchain – the digital ledger which records every bitcoin transaction – in an event know as a ‘hard fork’.
Litecoin, meanwhile, rose 2.95%% to $281.61 having recently overtook Iota to become the fifth most valuable cryptocurrency by market map.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 2.65% to $739.23, well below its recent peak of $863 set last week.