Investing.com - The digital currency Bitcoin was holding above $4,000 on Wednesday after a massive surge earlier in the week propelled it above the $4,400 level for the first time in its nine-year history.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, Bitcoin was last at $4,088.4, almost unchanged for the day. It rose as high as $4,430.0 on Tuesday before pulling back to $4,151.9 at the close.
Bitcoin has more than quadrupled in value so far this year and has gained around 42% in August. The surge means that the total market cap of Bitcoin has now risen to around $67 billion.
Bitcoin has rallied to a series of record highs in the past five days amid optimism that a software update designed to improve the coin's scalability and make it faster to process transactions will speed up the spread of the cryptocurrency.
New software called Segregated Witness, or SegWit was successfully adopted by the blockchain supporting Bitcoin last week.
The software was developed as a solution to the cryptocurrency’s scaling problem, which led to a split or so-called ‘hard fork’ on August 1 when the blockchain supporting Bitcoin split into two, creating Bitcoin Cash.
Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading, Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap after Bitcoin, was up 4.73% to $295.92.
Bitcoin Cash, the newly created offshoot of Bitcoin, was down 1.87% at $294.4, while Ripple lost 2.34% to trade at 15 cents.
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