Virtual currency a bit overpriced for the real world

Growing rate

The residential project announces a daily exchange rate based on the previous trading day's closing level. For Wednesday, it was a record 4,500 yuan per bitcoin.

"It's a pity that there haven't been any deals made by using bitcoins. I am afraid people are betting on further appreciation of the virtual currency, instead of using them to buy a home," said Wang.

The cybercurrency, which isn't backed by any physical assets, trades 24/7. There are no limits on how much the value can change or how large the transaction volume can be.

The lack of constraints has attracted a growing number of speculators from around the world hoping to profit from its extreme volatility.

"The value of one bitcoin was more than 8,000 yuan on Tuesday," said the chief executive officer of Yibite, who only gave his nickname as Shenyu (literally, "magic fish" in Chinese).

Shenyu runs the digital assets website, and he's also a senior bitcoin miner.

According to Shenyu, in recent months, the Chinese market has moved to center stage in the bitcoin world because of its surging trade volume.

"Since August, more than 100,000 bitcoins were traded every day in China, accounting for up to 40 percent of the global total," said Shenyu.

Another change is that the mainstream traders of bitcoins in China, who have so far been mostly 20-somethings, are being replaced by older and richer investors, said Shenyu.

The rising value of the bitcoin has also had an impact on Changjia (a nickname), founder of 8btc, a bitcoin content forum.

Changjia said he used to pay authors 0.15 bitcoin for every original story published on his website, and 0.1 bitcoin for a translated piece, but the currency's recent value surge has driven up his fees for content providers by 500 percent.

Bitcoins are appreciating even faster than property in China, driving holders of the virtual currency to find more valuable things to do with it than buy a property, Wang said, explaining the absence of bitcoin-based apartment deals.