Bitcoin surges to all-time high of $270
Bitcoin jumped to a record early Wednesday, with prices touching $270 on the exchange Mt. Gox. That tops the previous intraday high of $266 set in April — followed within a week by a plunge to below $100.

“I think what’s happening is that we’re seeing rising global awareness of bitcoin,” Jeremy Allaire, who recently raised $9 million in Series A funding for the bitcoin company Circle, told MarketWatch. Circle, which can claim the largest-ever fundraising for a bitcoin company, aims to make bitcoin payments easier for businesses and customers.

The record high comes amid a slew of bitcoin news. A Chinese bitcoin exchange, BTC China, recently took over as the exchange with the highest 30-day volume, according to bitcoincharts.com. Two Senate hearings on virtual currencies are likely to take place in the next few weeks, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The virtual currency, which has no central bank and is created through a cryptographic process called mining, just turned five on Halloween.