Last week a Bitcoin was worth $100. Yesterday: over $200. Today: ?
Yesterday, on Reddit's /r/bitcointip, a subreddit dedicated to the bot service that allows redditors to easily "tip" or transfer bitcoins to other users, an anonymous Redditor under the moniker "bitcoinbillionaire" gave away an estimated $13,627 in Bitcoins during a surprise charity spree. While it's uncertain if the indiscriminate donations were a joke or an elaborate act of trolling (at one point during the spree the benefactor even exclaimed "I am bitcoin!"), the money was undoubtedly real.
One recipient of the random cash, a Redditor who goes by "karelb," posted yesterday that she "wish[ed] for the price to crash" and minutes later recieved a $20 BTC (or $4680 USD) tip from "bitcoinbillionaire".
"I have no idea who he was, what he liked so much about my frankly stupid comment and I was frankly quite shocked," Karelb, a computational linguistics student from the Czech Republic told BuzzFeed. Karleb, who has already used some of the money to buy a mobile phone, noted that, while she's a casual early adopter of the currency, she's worried about volitility. "I think that if it should work as a currency, it should be *stable* and not grow this fast. I actually think that if it will crash, people will stop taking it as an investment and start taking it as a currency again." Shortly after our conversation, Bitcoin's value fell by nearly half.
This morning BuzzFeed also spoke with Zlatko Bijelic, Operations and Project Manager at Bitcoinstore, who noted the Bitcoin-centric retailer has been putting up "some pretty insane numbers" over the past few days and is looking to expand its staff to meet demand. While Bijelic wouldn't comment on exact figures, anecdotal evidence based on a dollar counter on Bitcoinstore's homepage shows a near $100,000 increase in store purchases in less than 24 hours. When asked if that was representative of Bitcoinstore's current numbers, Bijelic described the estimate as "somewhat accurate."
Speaking on his own behalf, Bijelic was bullish on Bitcoin's valuation and extremely supportive of the currency's rise. "I don't believe there will be a crazy crash where it goes to $9 or $24 dollars," he said. "I see a rise to about the $400-$500 mark and then a dip of about $50 here and there. I don't think its anything people should be afraid of."
