Bitcoin yesterday was trading up more than 20 percent from last week’s lows, while several other cryptocurrencies that US President Donald Trump said would be included in a new US strategic reserve also rallied sharply.
Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that his January executive order on digital assets would create a stockpile of currencies including bitcoin, ether, XRP, solana and cardano. The names had not previously been announced.
Bitcoin and ether would be at the heart of this reserve, he wrote on Sunday.
Photo: AFP
The post sent bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, up by one-fifth from the November lows it was trading at on Friday, helping flip sentiment on a token that has been sliding since mid-January on disappointment Trump has not followed through on pledges to loosen regulation.
“Trump just gave the pump that crypto traders have been holding out for,” City Index Group senior analyst Matt Simpson said.
“Any faith that was lost last week appears to have been restored,” and new highs could be made unless there was another wave of risk-off selling, he said.
Chris Weston, research head at Australian online broker Pepperstone Group Ltd, said it was possible the rally would extend into the first White House Crypto Summit that Trump is to host on Friday, with the risk that the bearishness in other markets could weigh on sentiment.
While Wall Street closed higher on Friday, the recent sell-off in large technology bellwethers such as Nvidia Corp has eroded confidence in bitcoin, which some see as an alternative tech proxy.
Bitcoin fell more than 17 percent last month, clocking its biggest monthly percentage fall since June 2022 and losing more than one-third of its price since topping US$105,000 in early January.
Its rally since Trump’s election win in November last year was spurred by optimism that the crypto-friendly president would champion a strategic bitcoin fund and end the crackdown on the industry by the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
Beyond a flurry of appointments of crypto-friendly officials when Trump took office, there has been little concrete news so far around that policy for investors.
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