This convicted Ponzi-schemer may be responsible for bitcoin's massive price spike

Bitcoin is ripping higher these days and a report from the Financial Times suggests that a convicted Ponzi schemer's latest enterprise could be behind the surge.

Sergei Mavrodi runs the website MMM, which describes itself as the "Chinese social financial network."

There, he breaks down in precise detail how investors can buy into bitcoin with multiple trading accounts, FT Alphaville's Izabella Kaminska reports.

Mavrodi offers bonuses to MMM investors depending on how many additional people they can bring into the network, and, additionally, he entices people to take to YouTube to upload testimonials of how much they made.

While US-based bitcoin investors were reluctant to hang the entire balance of the cryptocurrency's appreciation (about 90% over the past month) on Mavrodi's Chinese social financial network, they also cannot deny the recent impact of China's investors on bitcoin.

"We have not seen volume like this coming out of China since 2013," Brendan O'Connor, CEO of Genesis Global Trading, a bitcoin broker, told Business Insider.

Yesterday, bitcoin shot up about 10%, to around the $400 level and today it rose another 20% by the opening of US markets, to $480.

Business Insider attempted to reach Mavrodi through his website, but did not receive a response by publication time.

Here's the post on the Alphaville blog.