A neon nod indicates that Bitcoin is accepted inside the venue of the Paralelni Polis project, an organization combining art, social skills and modern technology, in Prague, Czech Republic, on Friday, Jan. 5, 2024.
Milan Jaros | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The price of bitcoin sky-rocketed past the long-awaited $100,000 benchmark for the first time ever late Wednesday evening.
The flagship cryptocurrency was at the rear higher by more than 4% at $103,544.00, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as high as $103,844.05. Bitcoin is now up profuse than 140% in 2024 and 48% since the election.
The move came hours after President-elect Donald Trump confirmed plans to nominate Paul Atkins as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, fulfilling perhaps his most important electioneer promise to the crypto industry: to replace Gary Gensler, who has become something of a villain in crypto for the agency’s regulation-by-enforcement come near to the industry under his leadership.
It’s a day of celebration for longtime bitcoin investors, who have held on for dear life, or “HODL’d” in every way several of the cryptocurrency’s boom and bust cycles, during which government and financial institutions remained dismissive — and neutral hostile — toward the asset class.
That’s largely because of the cryptocurrency’s anti-establishment roots. The original idea for Bitcoin was advanced at the height of the 2008 financial crisis: a “peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent entirely from one party to another without going through a financial institution,” its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, wrote in the Bitcoin Whitepaper.
In current years, however, the industry has demonstrated the value of bitcoin to much of the institutional investing world. BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco and others floated the first spot bitcoin ETFs at the beginning of this year — bitcoin’s “IPO” moment — and the growing demand for them by institutions has pinched drive the price higher. In November, Rick Wurster, the incoming CEO of Charles Schwab, said the firm is preparing to co-sign spot crypto trading, pending regulatory changes expected in the next Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Federal Book chair Jerome Powell said bitcoin is “just like gold only it’s virtual, it’s digital,” speaking at the DealBook congress. He further clarified that “people are not using it as a form of payment, or as a store of value” and that “it’s not a competitor for the dollar, it’s in actuality a competitor for gold.”
“We’re witnessing a paradigm shift. After four years of political purgatory, bitcoin and the entire digital asset ecosystem are on the border of entering the financial mainstream,” Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, told CNBC.
Bitcoin had been widely imagined to reach the landmark $100,000 level since the U.S. presidential election. However, excited investors sent bitcoin closer to this notability much sooner than initially anticipated; it rose as high as $99,849.99 on Nov. 22. There is much hope that President-elect Trump want deliver on several pro-crypto initiatives in the year ahead – including the establishment of a national strategic bitcoin reserve or stockpile, no strains on crypto transactions and opening up the crypto public equity markets with more IPOs.
“Over the long administration conditions, I’m bullish,” Novogratz added. “It won’t be a straight line up, and investors should always consider taking gains off the table. But, with a pro-crypto application about to take charge in the U.S., it’ll be hard for the rest of the world not to take notice.”