Market up $ 750 billion, nearly double this month as Bitcoin hits new highs

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Topline

Bitcoin’s massive rally continued over the weekend, pushing the market cap of the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency to $ 1.2 trillion on Saturday, and leading to the biggest monthly gain on record on the crypto market, with institutional adoption helping to pour billions of dollars into the nascent space.

In this photo illustration, a multiple exposure image shows a ... — Bitcoin’s new high above $ 57,500 helped the crypto market record its biggest monthly gain on … [+] record.

SOPA / LightRocket images via Getty Images

Highlights

As of 9:30 a.m. ET, the price of bitcoin has jumped 9% in the past 24 hours to around $ 57,350, pushing weekly gains over 20%, according to CoinMarketCap.

The prices of ether and the binance coin, the second and third largest tokens in the world, have risen 13% and 120%, respectively, over the past week, helping the crypto market to sense wide to raise a total value of nearly $ 1.8 trillion, nearly double. as much as its market capitalization of $ 1 trillion at the start of February.

Experts, including Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, attribute much of the gains to a wave of institutional adoption in recent weeks after electric carmaker Tesla revealed a $ 1.5 billion bitcoin investment in the Beginning of the month.

MicroStrategy, one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin shareholder companies, raised nearly $ 1.1 billion in debt on Friday to buy more of the pioneer cryptocurrency, nearly twice as much as the company had originally planned to raise given the surge of interest.

On Thursday and Friday, North America’s first two Bitcoin exchange-traded funds debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange, recovering more than $ 200 million from investors.

While he has fueled much of the crypto surge in recent weeks, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted early on Saturday, bitcoin and ether prices “now appear high”, although he also indicated that the cryptocurrency may serve as a better guard against inflation than gold, the safe haven asset of origin.

Surprising fact

The price of bitcoin hit a new high of $ 57,505 around 7:45 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, nearly 6 times its value a year ago.

Key context

Recent market gains have now far eclipsed the short-lived price mania that began in 2017, where prices rose 15-fold to a high of almost $ 20,000, in part thanks to apps. like Coinbase which made trading easier for individual investors. This bubble proved unsustainable, and the price of bitcoin fell 80% at the end of 2018, once countries like South Korea started cracking down on cryptocurrency trading.

What we don’t know

The biggest question mark surrounding the future of cryptocurrency is regulation, which ultimately led to a fall in cryptocurrency prices three years ago. Securities and Exchange Commission officials have hinted that a full review may be underway, but not all experts are convinced it will hurt the market. “Given its still nascent and volatile nature, we believe that less than 5% of SOEs will take the bitcoin investment route to some extent over the next 12-18 months, but could increase significantly as time goes on. that more regulation and acceptance of this currency is needed further down the road, “Ives said on Friday.

Tangent

Even avid Bitcoin critics are heating up at token amid recent gains. Billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach, the CEO of DoubleLine Capital who once called bitcoin a “lie,” called bitcoin “the stimulus asset” in a Tweeter Thursday, alluding to concerns that an increase in government spending could trigger problematic inflation and lower the value of the dollar while boosting safe-haven assets like bitcoin and gold.