Top line
Bitcoin’s massive rally continued through the weekend, pushing the market capitalization of the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency to $ 1.2 trillion on Saturday and leading to the largest monthly gain on the wider cryptocurrency market since institutional adoption helps shed billions of dollars in the birthplace.
Bitcoin’s new high of over $ 57,500 helped the crypto market record its biggest monthly gain … [+]
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Key facts
As of 9:30 a.m. ET, the price of bitcoin has risen 9 percent in the past 24 hours to about $ 57,350, pushing weekly earnings to over 20 percent, according to CoinMarketCap.
The prices of ether and binance, the second and third largest tokens in the world, have risen by 13% and 120%, respectively, in the last week, helping the wider cryptocurrency market to gather a total value of almost 1.8 trillion dollars – almost twice as much as its market capitalization of 1 trillion dollars in early February.
Experts, including Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, fix much of the gains on a stream of institutional adoptions in recent weeks after Tesla, a maker of electric cars, unveiled a $ 1.5 billion bitcoin investment earlier this month.
MicroStrategy, one of the bank’s largest publicly traded corporate shareholders, raised nearly $ 1.1 billion in debt on Friday to buy more of the pioneering cryptocurrency – nearly twice as much as the company initially expected to grow. , given the wave of interests.
On Thursday and Friday, the first two North American exchange-traded funds debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange, recovering more than $ 200 million from investors.
Despite fueling much of the crypto optimism in recent weeks, billionaire CEO Elon Musk posted on Twitter early saturday that bitcoin and ether prices now “seem high”, although he also indicated the cryptocurrency could serve as a better protection against inflation than gold, the original asset of the safe haven.
Surprising fact
The bitcoin price hit a new high of $ 57,505 at about 7:45 a.m. Eastern Saturday morning – nearly 6 times its value a year ago.
Key background
Recent market gains have greatly overshadowed the short-term price craze that began in 2017, during which prices rose 15-fold to a then-high of nearly $ 20,000, thanks in part to applications like Coinbase that made investing easier individual. That bubble proved unsustainable, and the price of Bitcoin fell by 80% by the end of 2018, once countries like South Korea began to reduce cryptocurrency transactions.
What we don’t know
The biggest question surrounding the future of cryptocurrencies is regulation, which eventually led to lower cryptocurrency prices three years ago. Officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission have suggested that there could be increased control, but not all experts are convinced it will affect the market. “Given the still incipient and volatile nature, we believe that less than 5% of public companies will be on the path to investing bitcoin in a certain capacity in the next 12-18 months, but it could move significantly further. what will be regulated and accepted more this currency. he is moving further down the road, “Ives said on Friday.
Tangent
Even firm bitcoin critics are warming up to the symbol amid recent gains. Billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital, who once called bitcoin a “lie,” called bitcoin a “stimulus asset.” tweet On Thursday, alluding to concerns that increased government spending could trigger problematic inflation and reduce the value of the dollar, while stimulating safe haven assets such as bitcoin and gold.
Additional readings
The value of the Bitcoin market exceeds $ 1 trillion amid Tesla-powered surges (Forbes)
Bitcoin rises to a new level after Tesla said it had invested $ 1.5 billion (Forbes)
Not just Tesla: big institutions continue to pile up in Bitcoin, because the price of rockets exceeds $ 50,000 (Forbes)