Bitcoin holds near $16,000 as proxy stocks

In New York: Bitcoin near $16,000 after the cryptocurrency’s biggest rally in two weeks ended a rout that wiped more than $9,000 off.

digital coin fell 0.6% to $15,843 at 8.50am in New York, having earlier climbed as much as 3.6%. Among rival digital currencies, ripple extended its gains to 11%, while ethereum and litecoin fell 1.2% and 3.1% respectively, according to data.

The relatively quiet day for bitcoin comes on the heels of a five-day slump that reached 44% at its depths and took the coin below $11,000 on Friday. Just four days earlier.
Investors continued to snap up shares in companies often seen as a safer alternative to investing directly in the cryptocurrency itself. On Track Innovation also advanced.

Bitcoin’s volatility is adding to an ongoing debate about how to value the digital coin and which has surged about 1,600% this year.

Edward Stringham, president of the American Institute for Economic Research, a Massachusetts-based research group, said on Bloomberg Television. “We cannot predict whether it’s going to be zero or $1 million or anything in between.”

For sceptics doubting whether individuals and businesses will truly start using bitcoin as a medium of exchange— and as opposed to some officially backed digital currency—the short-lived rebound from the past week’s sell-off portends further declines.

“It’s much more likely once you’ve made a big downward movement like the one we made last week that you have a bigger and more complex correction,”so that the Ric Spooner, a Sydney-based analyst at CMC Markets, told Bloomberg Television. “Once a market like this one locks into those patterns it becomes pretty good” to follow via chart-based analysis, he said.