Topline
Bitcoin’s massive rally continued into the weekend, bringing the market cap of the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency to $ 1.2 trillion on Saturday, leading to the broader crypto market’s largest monthly gain ever recorded as institutional adoption recorded billions dollars into the nascent space.
Bitcoin’s new high above $ 57,500 has helped the crypto market record its largest monthly profit [+]
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Main Facts
As of 9:30 a.m. ET, bitcoin’s price is up 9% in the last 24 hours to around $ 57,350, pushing its weekly profit up to more than 20%, according to CoinMarketCap.
Prices of ether and binance coins, the world’s second and third largest tokens, have surged 13% and 120% respectively over the past week, bringing the broader crypto market to a total value of nearly $ 1.8 trillion – nearly twice as much as the $ 1 trillion market cap at the beginning of February.
Experts, including Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, have made much of the gains from a flood of institutional adoption in recent weeks after electric carmaker Tesla revealed a $ 1.5 billion bitcoin investment earlier this month.
Publicly traded MicroStrategy, one of bitcoin’s largest shareholders, raised nearly $ 1.1 billion in debt Friday to buy more of the groundbreaking cryptocurrency – nearly twice as much as the company initially expected to increase given the surge of interest.
On Thursday and Friday, North America’s first two bitcoin exchange-traded funds debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange, pulling more than $ 200 million from investors.
Despite much of the crypto bullishness being fueled in recent weeks, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk said tweeted Saturday asked that bitcoin and ether prices now “seem high,” although he also pointed out that the cryptocurrency could serve as better protection against inflation than gold, the original safe haven.
Surprising fact
The price of bitcoin hit a new high of $ 57,505 on Saturday at around 7:45 a.m. East – almost six times its value a year ago.
Main background
The market’s recent gains have far eclipsed the short-lived price mania that began in 2017, with prices rising 15 times to a then-high of nearly $ 20,000, thanks in part to apps like Coinbase that made trading easier for individual investors. That bubble turned out to be unsustainable, and bitcoin’s price plunged 80% in late 2018 when countries like South Korea began 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 cryptocurrency prices falling three years ago. Securities and Exchange Commission officials have hinted that tighter supervision could be imminent, but not all experts believe it will hurt the market. “ Given its still burgeoning and volatile nature, we think less than 5% of listed companies will hit the bitcoin investment path in some capacity in the next 12 to 18 months, but could go up significantly with more regulation and adoption this currency “picks up further down the road,” Ives said Friday.
Tangent
Even ardent bitcoin critics are warming up for the 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 tweet Thursday, citing concerns that increased government spending could cause problematic inflation and drop the dollar’s value, while boosting safe haven assets such as bitcoin and gold.
Read further
Bitcoin market value soars past $ 1 trillion amid Tesla-fueled spike (Forbes)
Bitcoin soars to a new high after Tesla says it invested $ 1.5 billion (Forbes)
Not Just Tesla: Major institutions continue to pile up in Bitcoin as the price skyrockets above USD 50,000 (Forbes)