Following the recent spike in bitcoin trading volume and price, shares of Grayscale Investment’s Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT) surged to US$32 per share, marking a 10.92% increase over the past few days as well as an almost ten times increase in volume.
BIT, the publicly tradable shares of bitcoin operating under the ticker GBTC, was launched back in March and represents approximately one tenth of a bitcoin. As of today, bitcoins in the Bitcoin Investment Trust are being sold at US$320 per BTC.
Currently, bitcoins are being traded at US$330 per bitcoin across international exchanges including Bitstamp and Bitfinex, with Chinese investors seemingly driving the bullish trend by sheer volume as many are purchasing bitcoins at around US$360 per BTC on average.
Financial experts predict that the surge of bitcoin price and trading volume is driven by major capital controls being implemented in China today. According to a graph provided by Zerohedge, the price of bitcoin immediately began to rise after the Chinese government implemented strict capital controls a few weeks ago.
"China is imposing fresh controls to prevent too much money from leaving the country, in an effort to keep badly needed funds at home to battle a deepening slowdown in the world’s second biggest economy,” the WSJ reported. However, it will be interesting to see how the market will react if China does in fact ease capital controls.
Additionally, bitcoin trading volume has surpassed US$1 billion mark in the past 24 hours, with well over 2.8 million BTC traded on international exchanges. As long as the growth of both bitcoin price and trading volume continues to surge, shares of BIT will move closer back to its all time high in May, when shares of BIT were being traded at US$49 per share, or US$490 per BTC