Bitcoin soars above $9,400 to new record high

Frank Chaparro, in Business Insider

The price of bitcoin, the scorching-hot cryptocurrency, soared above $9,000 a coin for the first time on Saturday night.

Bitcoin was trading up 7.30% against the US dollar at an all-time high of $9,412 a coin at 1:43 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban told Business Insider the price of bitcoin will continue to rise as long as it continues to act more as a collectible than a currency.

Bitcoin's impressive march into record territory continued Sunday afternoon.

The digital currency, which has been on a tear since the US Thanksgiving holiday, soared past $9,000 a coin Saturday night.

By 1:43 p.m. ET Sunday the digital currency was trading at an all-time high of $9,412 a coin, a more than $1,000 increase from its price mid-day on Thursday.

Bitcoin's rapid appreciation appears to have coincided with a spike in the userbase of the largest platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies in the US.

Coinbase, the San Francisco firm, grew its user count by 100,000 to 13.1 million from Wednesday to Friday, according to analysis by Alistair Milne, cofounder of Altana Digital Currency Fund. The analysis was first reported by CNBC on Saturday. At the time of print, Coinbase reported more than 13.3 million users.

As for how high the cryptocurrency will go, one of Wall Street's biggest bitcoin bulls recently doubled his price target for the coin to $11,500. Tom Lee, the managing partner and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, expects bitcoin to hit $11,500 by mid-2018, up from the estimate of $6,000 he made in August.

Lee is optimistic about the coming launch of bitcoin futures by Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which many think will increase the cryptocurrency's legitimacy, thereby expanding its potential user base. Folks also believe futures will help dampen bitcoin's spine-tingling volatility.

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