Bitcoin smashes through $A100,000 price barrier ahead of big change to the cryptocurrency

In mid-November 2021 bitcoin hit an all-time high in Australia with a price just shy of $90,000 and then went on to slump over the following year to $25,000, proving the much-reported volatility of cryptocurrency overall.

Since that low, the original cryptocurrency bitcoin has experienced a steady rise toward a new all-time high of over $100,000 last night.

Unlike traditional "shares" where most fluctuations can be attributed to demand based on the performance of a particular company or industry, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are priced purely on supply and demand.

Often sharp peaks such as those experienced today are based purely on a strong demand for the currency with no clear reasoning.

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However, Bitcoin is due for a "halving" event in the coming months which could be the reason for this most recent surge.

Unlike a stock split which sees a single share in a company split into multiple to increase the total share offering and reduce the price of an individual share, the bitcoin halving is more about slowing the supply of bitcoin is a finite "resource" - often compared to gold in that there is a limited amount of that in the ground.

Bitcoin is "mined" by computers, running advanced processing to "crack the code" and release bitcoins as reward. 

As of the "halving" event which will come soon, the reward for successfully mining a "block" will be reduced from 6.25 bitcoins down to 3.125 - thus slowing the supply as we push toward a predicted exhaustion of the Bitcoin supply in or around 2140.

That pre-defined limitation makes the scarcity of the resource so appealing to some, with a total of 21 million bitcoin to be available in 2140. 

Currently, there are 19.6 million bitcoin in "circulation".

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