Bitcoin is worth $6,000 for the first time this year

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Last year was a brutal one for holders of bitcoin. The price fell from its all-time high of $19,500 in December 2017 to a low of $3,100 a year later. Then the price mostly languished between $3,000 and $4,000 in the early months of 2019.

But recently bitcoin has been on a tear. On April 2, the price soared almost 20 percent in a single day to reach $5,000. The price has drifted steadily upward since then, and it hit $6,000 on Wednesday.

It's often difficult to explain bitcoin price movements, and this case is no exception. Major bitcoin-related news in recent weeks has seemed mostly negative: a possible Chinese government ban on cryptocurrency mining, worries that a major cryptocurrency exchange might be insolvent, and most recently, hackers stealing $40 million from another cryptocurrency exchange.

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