A neon sign indicates that Bitcoin is accepted contained in the venue of the Paralelni Polis project, a company combining art, social sciences and modern technology, in Prague, Czech Republic, on Friday, Jan. 5, 2024.
Milan Jaros | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The value of bitcoin soared past the long-awaited $100,000 benchmark for the primary time ever late Wednesday evening.
The flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by greater than 7% at $103,134.31, in keeping with Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as high as $103,844.05. Bitcoin is now up greater than 140% in 2024 and 48% because the election.
The move got here hours after President-elect Donald Trump announced plans to nominate Paul Atkins as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, fulfilling perhaps his most significant campaign promise to the crypto industry: to interchange Gary Gensler, who has develop into something of a villain in crypto for the agency’s regulation-by-enforcement approach to the industry under his leadership.
It is a day of celebration for longtime bitcoin investors, who’ve held on for dear life, or “HODL’d” through several of the cryptocurrency’s boom and bust cycles, during which government and financial institutions remained dismissive — and even hostile — toward the asset class.
That is largely due to cryptocurrency’s anti-establishment roots. The unique idea for Bitcoin was proposed at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis: a “peer-to-peer version of electronic money would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to a different without going through a financial institution,” its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, wrote within the Bitcoin Whitepaper.
Lately, nevertheless, the industry has demonstrated the worth of bitcoin to much of the institutional investing world. BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco and others launched the primary spot bitcoin ETFs at the start of this 12 months — bitcoin’s “IPO” moment — and the growing demand for them by institutions has helped drive the value higher. In November, Rick Wurster, the incoming CEO of Charles Schwab, said the firm is preparing to enter spot crypto trading, pending regulatory changes expected in the following Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said bitcoin is “identical to gold only it’s virtual, it’s digital,” speaking on the DealBook conference. He further clarified that “people will not be using it as a type of payment, or as a store of value” and that “it isn’t a competitor for the dollar, it’s really a competitor for gold.”
“We’re witnessing a paradigm shift. After 4 years of political purgatory, bitcoin and your entire digital asset ecosystem are getting ready to entering the financial mainstream,” Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, told CNBC.
Bitcoin had been widely expected to succeed in the landmark $100,000 level because the U.S. presidential election. Nevertheless, excited investors sent bitcoin closer to this mark much before initially anticipated; it rose as high as $99,849.99 on Nov. 22. There may be much hope that President-elect Trump will deliver on several pro-crypto initiatives within the 12 months ahead – including the establishment of a national strategic bitcoin reserve or stockpile, no taxes on crypto transactions and opening up the crypto public equity markets with more IPOs.
“Over the long run, I’m bullish,” Novogratz added. “It won’t be a straight line up, and investors should at all times consider taking gains off the table. But, with a pro-crypto administration about to take charge within the U.S., it’ll be hard for the remainder of the world to not take notice.”
