【Michael Maien】

Bitcoin is Michael Maienon the rise again.

On Wednesday, the price of one bitcoin broke through $12,000, a first for the cryptocurrency. At time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $12,740, according to CoinMarketCap.

UPDATE: Dec. 6, 2017, 1:53 p.m. CET Less than 12 hours after it first passed the price of $12,000, Bitcoin is now trading at over $13,000.

SEE ALSO: Bitcoin just made the Winklevoss twins billionaires

Bitcoin's market cap broke $200 billion for the first time as well, and is currently at $213 billion. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is now at around $375 billion.

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Just one week ago, Bitcoin passed the $10,000 barrier for the first time. Soon after that the price fell to about $9,300, but the correction was short-lived.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The latest price rise comes after several futures markets said they'd be launching Bitcoin futures in the near future. This includes CME, Nasdaq and CBOE.

The promise of institutional investors joining the game is positive news for Bitcoin, as are increasingly bullish price predictions from several notable investors. Billionaire Mike Novogratz recently said Bitcoin price could easily reach $40,000 by the end of 2018.

On the flip side, Bitcoin's network is pretty strained right now; transactions are slow and transaction fees are high. A planned "hard fork" that was supposed to alleviate it was canceled in November, and several other projects used the hard fork method -- which takes Bitcoin's blockchain and history but moves in a separate direction -- to start a Bitcoin clone. The most prominent of these, Bitcoin Cash, has gotten a fair amount of support from some investors, but its price has leveled off recently.

The price of Bitcoin increased more than 1,200% since January. It's been called a bubble a lot during that time, but the bubble is yet to burst.

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