Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, topped US$34,000, just weeks after passing another major milestone.
The currency gained as much as 7.8 percent to US$34,182.75, before slipping to about US$33,970 as of 3:05pm yesterday in Singapore. It advanced almost 50 percent last month, when it breached US$20,000 for the first time.
The latest gains top an eye-popping rally for the controversial digital asset, which rebounded sharply after a severe crash in March last year that saw it lose 25 percent amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: Reuters
The currency “will be on the road to US$50,000 probably in the first quarter of 2021,” said Antoni Trenchev, managing partner and cofounder of Nexo in London, which bills itself as the world’s biggest cryptocurrency lender.
Institutional investors returning to their desks this week will likely boost prices further after retail buying over the holidays, he said.
Bitcoin has increasingly been “embraced in more global investment portfolios as holders expand beyond tech geeks and speculators,” Bloomberg Intelligence commodity strategist Mike McGlone wrote in a note last month.
Proponents of the currency have also seized on the narrative that the coin could act as a store of wealth amid supposed rampant money printing by central banks, even as inflation remains mostly muted.
Bitcoin should eventually climb to about US$400,000, Guggenheim Investments chief investment officer Scott Minerd told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Dec. 16 last year.
Still, there are reasons to be cautious, partly because cryptocurrencies remains a thinly traded market.
Bitcoin slumped as much as 14 percent on Nov. 26 amid warnings that the asset class was overdue for a correction. A big run-up in price in 2017 was followed by an 83 percent rout that lasted a year.
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