The bitcoin exchange rate at the Coinmarketcap rose by 11.7% to $16,800 in the last 24 hours.

Axar.az reports that on December 22, bitcoin showed a sharp decline - by 24.6% to $11,800. On December 16, the bitcoin set a historic high, demonstrating an increase of 8.2% and breaking the mark of $19,000.

Earlier, Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the Ministry of Finance has prepared a draft law of regulation of cryptocurrencies. "The Ministry of Finance has prepared a draft law, currently under consideration, which will determine the procedure for issuing, taxing, buying and circulation of cryptocurrency," he said.

The Ministry of Finance of Russia currently participates in the preparation of amendments to the Russian legislation regarding the regulation of the market of digital financial technologies. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the government and the Central Bank to develop legislative regulation of cryptocurrencies, mining and ICO by July 2018.

Bitcoin is a decentralized system based on blockchain technology, which any user - participant of the system can emit, creating new blocks of the system with the help of a computing device. The concept of the system was first published in November 2008.

In early August 2017, cryptocurrency was divided into classic bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, due to disputes about updates, which were supposed to increase the speed of transaction processing.

Russian Minister of Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov said earlier he believes that Russia is unlikely to legalize bitcoin.