Bitcoin has faced weeks of upheaval following condemnation for energy usage by Tesla CEO Elon Musk - dipping to $31,000 earlier this month. Now BTC is rebounding but is still not close to the all-time high of $64,829.14 (£45,918.16) on April 14.
At the time of writing, bitcoin sat at $38,822.13 (£27,497.52) a 24-hour increase of 1.85 percent.
BTC had a market cap of $726.69 billion (£514.71 billion), and its 24 hour high exceeded $40K at $40,894.44 (£28,965.33).
These figures show a remarkable recovery following Sunday's dip to $30K.
Cryptocurrencies Cardano, Ethereum and dogecoin have also seen rallies in the past 24 hours.
Read More: Cryptocurrency prices UK: What is going on with the crypto market?
Bitcoin functions through miners, with an estimated one million computers processing and verifying transactions.
This level of mining uses massive amounts of energy, with huge a carbon footprint for BTC.
Professor Brian Lucey at Trinity College Dublin told the Financial Times: “Bitcoin alone consumes as much electricity as a medium-sized European country.
“Bitcoin alone consumes as much electricity as a medium-sized European country."
Since Mr Musk's condemnation and withdrawal of using bitcoin with his car manufacturers Tesla, pledges have been made to change the amount of energy miners use.
On Monday the Tesla CEO wrote: “Spoke with North American bitcoin miners.
"They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising.”
And China, which accumulates 65 percent of the total global electricity use from crypto mining, is beginning to stamp down on energy use.
Chinese vice-premier Liu He said the country will crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading, resulting in the recent dip in BTC.
With more still to do to improve bitcoin's carbon footprint, investors may see more dips like that of this weekend.
As with any cryptocurrency, investing is a risk - as the volatile market can see losses as well as gains.
The European Banking Authority (EBA) has warned some of the biggest risks facing consumers include:
- money may be stolen from your ‘digital wallet’
- the value of the virtual currency may change quickly reducing the value of your investment, and
- losing your money if the exchange platform collapses.
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