Bitcoin hits a record high above $4,900
The price of the red-hot cryptocurrency soared passed $4,900 Tuesday afternoon to $4,926, an all-time high for the cryptocurrency, according to data from Bloomberg.
Other estimates put bitcoin's all-time high over $5,000, such as CoinDesk's index.
Bitcoin hit a record high of $4,921, according to data from Bloomberg, at the beginning of September, but quickly saw its price decline amid news of a crackdown in China and regulatory uncertainty around initial coin offerings, a cryptocurrency-based fundraising method. After bottoming out near $2,900 per coin on September 15, it has since rallied.
On Tuesday, Russian president Vladimir Putin added to the uncertainty, hinting at a possible cryptocurrency crackdown in Russia.
Putin's comments follow mounting criticism from some of Wall Street's most powerful players.
On September 12 JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon called bitcoin "a fraud" and said it was "worse than tulips bulbs" in the 1600s.
Then, in a recent interview with Bloomberg News, Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, the world's largest investor with $5.7 trillion under management, said he thinks the explosive growth of bitcoin points to nefarious behavior.
"It just identifies how much money laundering there is being done in the world," Fink said. "How much people are trying to move currencies from one place to another."
Kenneth Rogoff, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, weighed in on bitcoin Monday, saying that "in the long run, the technology will thrive, but that the price of bitcoin will collapse."