Bitcoin reached an all-time high today, when it hit $125,449.77 at 4:55 am UTC. Although it has since normalized to around $122,000, at the time of writing, this is still a greater than 20% increase in value from December last year, when the cryptocurrency broke the $100,000 milestone. According to Reuters, Bitcoin has been rising for eight consecutive days before it hit this record, owing to rising confidence in U.S. equities and interest in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The flagship cryptocurrency, abbreviated as BTC, previously hit $124,000 in August, driven by the White House’s crypto-friendly policies and consequential interest from institutional investors. On the other hand, this jump is believed to be investors’ reactions to the U.S. federal shutdown, with many looking for alternative assets while Washington is sorting out its mess.
Crypto tracking and analysis site CoinMarketCap also suggested that there is a dwindling supply of readily available Bitcoin in exchanges. There’s been news of some MegaWhales moving large amounts of Bitcoin into long-term storage. For example, one investor moved 80,000 BTC from one dormant wallet in July, while 54,000 BTC (worth approximately $6.6 billion) was transferred out of Binance yesterday.
At the moment, BTC’s total market cap is nearing $2.5 trillion — meaning it’s about to catch up with silver. Although it’s still distant from gold’s over $26 trillion market cap, this shows that Bitcoin is slowly turning from a niche investment vehicle into a mainstream financial asset.
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