Bitcoin hits $15,000 and is already trading at $19,000 in Korea

If you bought 1 bitcoin yesterday, it would've cost you $12,000 and someone in your family probably would've called you a mad man. Just one day later, however, you'd be able to sell that bitcoin for $15,000.

The market cap of the world's most popular cryptocurrency is currently at $252 billion, and the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies just crossed $400 billion. However, right now most Bitcoin competitors are in the red, possibly because everyone's selling them to buy more Bitcoin.

Interestingly, Bitcoin's popularity in Korea is even bigger than in the rest of the world; there, the price is already above $19,000 on local exchanges.

Besides the Korean buying frenzy, Bitcoin's price is likely rising on the news that Bitcoin futures are launching on CME, Nasdaq and CBOE soon.

Furthermore, Lightning protocol, a technology that should make Bitcoin transactions so much quicker, reached version 1.0 on Wednesday. The three companies working on Lightning -- ACINQ, Blockstream, and Lightning Labs -- said they've successfully tested it on actual Bitcoin transactions. There's still a lot of work to be done before Lightning can safely be implemented, but this is promising news for Bitcoin, which is currently plagued by slow transactions and high transaction fees.

The price of Bitcoin is now up 1,500% since January 2017 and roughly 3,500% since January 2016.