The price of Bitcoin reaches over $100,000 for the first time, as seen on screen at a cryptocurrency exchange in Hong Kong, on December 5, 2024.
Paul Young | Bloomberg | Getty Images
price Bitcoin It rose beyond the long-sought record of $100,000 for the first time ever late Wednesday evening.
By Thursday afternoon, the major cryptocurrency had fallen short of that milestone. It was recently down about 0.08% at $98,588.27, according to Coin Metrics, and was trading at trading lows on Thursday after some profit-taking by investors. On Wednesday night, the price rose to $103,844.05.
This move came after President-elect Donald Trump announced plans to nominate Paul Atkins as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. This appointment could fulfill Trump's most important campaign promise to the cryptocurrency industry: to replace Gary Gensler, who has become a villain in the cryptocurrency space due to the agency's regulation-by-enforcement approach to the industry under his leadership.
Trump congratulated Bitcoin users in a post on Truth Social on Thursday morning, saying “you're welcome” for his role in helping send Bitcoin to $100,000, and that “together, we will make America great again.”
It's a day of celebration for longtime Bitcoin investors, who have held on for dear life, or “HODL'd” through the cryptocurrency's many boom-and-bust cycles, during which government and financial institutions have remained dismissive — and even hostile — toward it. Asset class.
This is largely due to cryptocurrency's anti-establishment roots. The original idea for Bitcoin was proposed at the height of the 2008 financial crisis: “A peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution,” said its founder. “, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in the Bitcoin white paper.
However, in recent years, the industry has demonstrated the value of Bitcoin to much of the institutional investing world. Black Rocksincerity, Invesco Others launched their first Bitcoin ETFs at the beginning of this year — Bitcoin's “IPO” moment — and growing demand for them from institutions has helped push the price higher. In November, Rick Wurster, the company's next CEO Charles SchwabHe said that the company is preparing to enter into spot cryptocurrency trading, pending regulatory changes expected in the incoming Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said bitcoin is “just like gold, but virtual and digital,” while speaking at the DealBook conference. He further explained that “people don't use it as a means of payment, or as a store of value” and that “it's not a competitor to the dollar, it's actually a competitor to gold.”
“We are witnessing a paradigm shift,” Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz told CNBC. “After four years of political purgatory, bitcoin and the entire digital asset ecosystem are on the cusp of entering the financial mainstream.”
Bitcoin was widely expected to reach the historic level of $100,000 since the US presidential election. However, eager investors sent Bitcoin closer to this mark much sooner than initially expected; It rose to $99,849.99 on November 22.
There is great hope that Trump will implement several pro-crypto initiatives in the coming year — including creating a national strategic stockpile of Bitcoin, not taxing cryptocurrency transactions and opening public cryptocurrency stock markets with more initial public offerings.
“Long term, I'm optimistic,” Novogratz added. “It's not going to be a straight line, and investors should always be thinking about taking gains off the table. But with a pro-crypto administration about to take over in the US, it's going to be hard for the rest of the world not to take notice.”
Bitcoin is now up more than 140% in 2024 and 48% since the election.
