Bitcoin price resurges despite coin delisting risks

Bitcoin is reaching 70 million-won mark again Tuesday amid a global credit company’s digital coin endorsement.

According to local crypto exchange Upbit, Bitcoin price rose above 69 million won ($60,860) as of 1:50 p.m., after falling as low as 62 million won on March 25.

Tuesday’s Bitcoin rally came after Visa Card announced Monday that it would accept cryptocurrencies for credit card bills. In its pilot program, Visa Card will allow settlement of transactions in USD Coin, a stable cryptocurrency pegged to US dollar in a 1:1 ratio.

With the move by Visa indicating the growing acceptance of digital coins by mainstream financial institutions, the cryptocurrency market has been seeing extreme volatility, especially for the coins that are about to delist from exchanges.

Sirin Coin soared more than 60 percent Monday, only two days ahead of its planned delisting from Upbit.

Upbit on March 17 flagged the coin with an ‘attention’ sign citing that the coin was failing to meet the internal standards in terms of business sustainability and liquidity and on March 24 decided to remove it from the exchange.

Sirin Coin is only one of the eight digital coins to be removed from the exchange along with seven other digital coins -- Bytom, Viberate, TenX Pay Token, Cortex, PumaPay, Quant and DATA. They were due to be unplugged at noon Wednesday.

Some of these coins showed huge swings in price. The price of Sirin and Bytom each rose 50 percent just within 24 hours.

“The capricious movement of some coins facing delisting indicate investors’ speculative mind hoping for a jackpot,” said an industry expert. “Investors should be extremely careful as the price fluctuation, especially upward movement, is unlikely to continue.”

(gypark@heraldcorp.com)