Bitcoin Price Back Above $17k to Set New All-Time High

The price of bitcoin has pushed back above $17,000, hitting a new all-time high on CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).

As of press time, the BPI had climbed as high as $17,382.64, beating the $17,364.56 reported previously on Dec. 7. As previously reported, that day saw significant price divergences among exchanges, leading to spreads in excess of $1,000 between the world's various marketplaces for bitcoin.

According to the BPI, the price of bitcoin has surged more than $2,000 today, a development that comes less than a day after options exchange CBOE first commenced trading of its initial bitcoin futures products. Data from CNBC indicates that the contract scheduled to expire in January is trading at $18,670 as of 3:38 p.m. EST.

At press time, bitcoin's price is $17,178.96, per the BPI representing an increase of over 14 percent.

Additional data from CoinMarketCap suggests that the wider cryptocurrency market is seeing gains, with several of the top-10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization seeing price increases above 10 percent in the past 24 hours. As it stands, the total market capitalization is at roughly $456 billion, according to the service.

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