Bitcoin climbed on Thursday, erasing some of its 18 per cent plunge since last week as investors signaled the sell-off may have been overdone.

Hours after the world’s largest cryptocurrency closed at a fresh low for the year, buyers began pushing up the price, which reached US$6,487.10 as of 9:58 a.m. in London. Rival digital tokens Ripple, Ethereum and Litecoin also gained.

The market leader’s slump since last week coincided with a string of negative news, including the release yesterday of a study suggesting its price may have been manipulated through trading in a cryptocurrency called Tether during last year’s record surge.

Tether, currently the No. 12 crypto by market value, was the second-most traded globally in the past 24 hours, Coinmarketcap data show. Each coin is supposed to be backed by US$1 of fiat money in a bank.

Bitcoin’s share of the virtual currency market has hovered in the 30 percent to 40 percent range this year as new coins are added every few days, according to data from Coinmarketcap, which tracks 1,628 cryptocurrencies. The Abyss, Hurify and Engine are among tokens added to market sites over the past few days alone.