Bitcoin pulverizes its all-time highs of over $ 23,000 National and international economy

His staunchest supporters claim that bitcoin is the new gold. A safe haven in times of turbulence. Whether or not this is true, the virtual currency has returned. Its price pulverized the historical highs of December 2017, catapulting over 23,000 USD on Thursday, a meeting the end of the year that will turn 2020 into an extremely profitable year for its investors, thanks to an escalation of over 400% compared to the March low, when it was around $ 3,600 and everything indicates that it will not be immune to the pandemic .

Often stigmatized under the suspicion of the balloon, attached to a vertigo volatility in which there are no strange upward or downward movements of more than 10% in a single day – much less common in other investment products – acceleration seems to matter this time stronger. “It’s not like the rise of 2017, in the last two months there has been a lot of positive news,” defends Raúl Marcos, cryptocurrency expert and CEO of carbon.com.

This good news can be summed up in three ways: more and more institutional investors seem to have lost their fear of filling their portfolios with bitcoins, the PayPal payment gateway has announced that it will allow the use of cryptocurrencies on its platform and banks such as BBVA’s Swiss subsidiary They will authorize deposits and transactions in cryptocurrencies from January 1, a step that other entities are studying to follow.

Raúl Marcos considers that the pandemic not only did not affect its value, but that in an environment of declining stocks, the postponement of real estate operations, increased liquidity and the lack of profitable investment options, it was positive. “While banks have struggled, cryptocurrency transactions have not stopped and fiscal stimuli to deal with the pandemic, bitcoin has emerged as a defensive alternative against future inflation,” he says.

One of the biggest examples of new cash inflows was the software company MicroStrategy. In August and September, he bought 425 million dollars in bitcoin (almost 350 million euros). And last week he raised another $ 650 million (530 million euros) in a bond issue he intends to use to continue buying the cryptocurrency. Its CEO, Michael Saylor, likes to compare bitcoin with Los Angeles Lakers star Lebron James. “I already played basketball when I was between 9 and 18 years old and, although I was very talented, it was irregular and inconsistent. Then it increased and from 18 to 28 it destroyed all its opponents “.

The similarity, loaded with that visionary rhetoric sometimes used by those who see cryptocurrency as a safe bet, serves to defend the fact that bitcoin has reached maturity when it is about to celebrate its 12th anniversary. During that time, his dizzying progress has been repeatedly compared to speculative fever for seventeenth-century Dutch tulips, and there have been warnings against governments, hardships on Wall Street, central banks, or prestigious university professors. those voices seem to have been deactivated in recent months amid a wave of favorable moves.

S&P Dow Jones has announced that it will launch an index of the 550 most traded cryptocurrencies in 2021. And even JP Morgan, the largest US bank, has taken a 180-degree shift in its approach, following allegations of fraud. by its CEO, Jamie Dimon, in 2017. “The long-term growth potential is considerable if it competes more intensely with gold as an alternative,” a note from its analysts read in October.

Last week, the entity went much further and rekindled expectations after it was learned that the investment arm of the Massachusetts Mutual Life insurance company had invested $ 100 million in bitcoin. He calculated that if the fever continues and pension funds and insurance companies in the US, EU, Japan and the UK put only 1% of their funds in bitcoin, they have the potential to absorb another 600 billion dollars. New gasoline for a fire that only grows.

Are we facing the final normalization of bitcoin? If not, then at least 170% growth this year has silenced the worst of them, such as Harvard University professor Kenneth Rogoff, who announced his collapse and gave it a price. real close to zero. His record, given the massive collapse of 2017, is the biggest warning against those who jump on the bandwagon. But for now, the party continues. And music continues to seem invulnerable to risks such as falling prices, the threat of fraud, its technological dependence or the possibility of more decisive government intervention to regulate it.