{"id":508722,"date":"2021-07-26T08:05:33","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T06:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=508722"},"modified":"2021-07-26T08:05:33","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T06:05:33","slug":"bitcoin-surges-on-speculation-over-amazon-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/508722\/bitcoin-surges-on-speculation-over-amazon-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin surges on speculation over Amazon plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin soared on Monday to approach $40,000, a rally some attributed to traders exiting bets on declines as well as ongoing speculation over Amazon.com Inc\u2019s potential involvement in the cryptocurrency sector.<\/p>\n

The largest crypto rose as much as 15% to $39,681 before paring some of the climb to trade at about $38,100 as of 10:58 a.m. in Hong Kong. Other virtual coins also rallied, including second-ranked Ether.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe extent of the jump was probably driven by over-leveraged shorts,\u201d said Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific at crypto exchange Luno in Singapore, while adding the rumors over Amazon likely had a role to play too.<\/p>\n

Amazon last week advertised a job vacancy for a digital currency product lead, stirring speculation it might accept digital coins for transactions.<\/p>\n

That builds on other recent supports for Bitcoin, including positive comments from Elon Musk and Ark Investment Management LLC\u2019s Cathie Wood. Over the weekend, the coin\u2019s price topped its 50-day moving average, a trend some view as positive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More than $700 million of Bitcoin shorts were liquidated on Monday, the most of any day in at least the past three months, according to data from Bybt.com.<\/p>\n

As prices spiked higher Monday, activity in Bitcoin futures surged. Over 1,000 contracts changed hands in a 10-minute trading window. As a result, volumes in the July front contract were around 10 times the average as of 9:20 a.m. in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin remains some $27,000 off its mid-April high of almost $65,000. It\u2019s been hurt by criticism of the energy consumed by the computer servers underpinning it, a regulatory crackdown in China and harsher official scrutiny in Europe and the US.<\/p>\n

Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc – which already owns Bitcoin – revealed at a conference last week that his space exploration company SpaceX also does.<\/p>\n

He added he\u2019d like to see the token succeed and that he personally has bought Bitcoin, Ether and Dogecoin. Ark\u2019s Wood said corporations should consider adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Amazon to set up South African headquarters in R4 billion Cape Town development<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin soared on Monday to approach $40,000, a rally some attributed to traders exiting bets on declines as well as ongoing speculation over Amazon.com Inc\u2019s potential involvement in the cryptocurrency sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":408575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508726,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508722\/revisions\/508726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}