The last quarter of the year has turned out real success for the digital currency bitcoin. The price of bitcoin, which has already reached the year's maximum of around $408 in November, has now achieved a new record and is heading to a new peak.

The December rally started on Friday the previous week and continued over the weekend reaching at press time the point of $453.46 and making over 9% growth in Friday trading this week. The price has been going up since the end of November when it plunged after the remarkable uprise of the first week of the month.

Bitcoin trading volume has also left the November peak behind. The absolute maximum of 3,49mln was reached on 5 December. Although it has decreased since then, the new trend in bitcoin price is driving the volume high again. At the moment, the largest exchanges that have traded the biggest sum of BTC for USD within a month are Bitfinex, Bitstamp, and OKCoin. For CNY the picture is different: here BTCC, Huobi, and OKCoin are the leaders of the market.

After the November rally, Sergei Mavrodi, the founder of the most notorious Russian Ponzi scheme MMM, claimed in an interview that he was responsible for the bitcoin rise. According to him, his MMM financial schemes operating in China drive large volumes of the cryptocurrency. This allegedly gives him control over the bitcoin economy.

Sonya Belova