22 Nov 2013 / Market Watch – The Internet just can’t get enough of bitcoin.
That much was apparent this week, which kicked off with two Senate hearings on virtual currencies. While the hearings included many questions about bitcoin’s potential for criminal activity, the Treasury Department’s Jennifer Shasky Calvery noted that cash is still the best way to launder money. (Read a full recap of the first Senate hearing here.)
“Even though we had an idea of the testimony, I think we were all pleasantly surprised at the bitcoin-friendly atmosphere,” Jeff Garzik, a bitcoin core developer, said in an email.
That “bitcoin-friendly” environment was followed by a surge in prices above $900 early Tuesday on the trading exchange Mt. Gox, the second-biggest exchange by volume. And the combination of price action and media coverage of the Senate hearings helped lead to a spike in Google searches for bitcoin on Tuesday. The chart below shows the surge in searches for the word bitcoin over the last month on Google. The values represent search interest relative to the highest level on the chart, which was Tuesday in this one-month period….. Read more
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/11/22/bitcoin-mania-in-three-charts/
