Bitcoin rises to record high after seven-week winning run
Bitcoin rose to a record high on president-elect Donald Trump’s support for digital assets and optimism about the upcoming inclusion of MicroStrategy Inc., an accumulator of the token, in a key US stock gauge.
The largest virtual currency rose more than 3.5 per cent at one point on Monday in Asia to an unprecedented US$106,493, exceeding its previous peak from Dec. 5. MicroStrategy announced Monday that it bought another US$1.5 billion of Bitcoin in the past week.
Trump is moving toward creating a friendly regulatory backdrop for digital assets, undoing a crackdown imposed by President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration. The Republican has also backed the idea of a strategic national Bitcoin stockpile, though many question the feasibility of the proposal.
A lot of people are “basing their expectation on a much more favourable administration,” Aya Kantorovich, co-founder of institutional crypto platform August, said on Bloomberg Television. The optimism is reflected in demand for exchange-traded funds investing in digital assets, she added.
On Friday, Nasdaq Global Indexes said MicroStrategy will join the Nasdaq 100 Index, the US technology stock gauge tracked by an array of investment funds. The software maker has transformed into a leveraged bet on Bitcoin as the company raises billions of dollars to plow into the digital asset.
“Now that MicroStrategy is in Nasdaq, index funds may buy its shares, and that will help the company to raise more equity to buy more Bitcoin,” said Sean McNulty, director of trading at liquidity provider Arbelos Markets.
It was the sixth consecutive Monday that the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based firm announced purchases of the digital asset. It owns about US$45 billion in Bitcoin, making
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