Bitcoin has set a new all-time high after smashing through $20,000.
Currently trading at $20,763, up over 7% in the past 24 hours, the world’s leading cryptocurrency opened at $19,246 on Tuesday, climbed to $19,442 on Wednesday and broke its previous intraday record of $19,783 set on December 18, 2017.
BTC is now up 185% year-to-date after kicking off 2020 at $7,234, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The massive gains follow moves by The Federal Reserve, along with other central banks, to control the economic fallout from Covid-19 by pumping trillions of dollars of liquidity into the capital markets.
Bitcoin’s steady rise throughout the year also reflects mainstream adoption by payment platforms such as PayPal and increasing institutional interest. With its fixed supply of 21 million units, the digital currency is making a case as a safe-haven asset against a backdrop of low-to-zero yielding government bonds, the relentless pandemic, unprecedented industry disruptions and global economic uncertainty.
Over the course of 2020, the leading cryptocurrency has attracted big investors like Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corporation, longtime hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller and Michael Saylor, CEO at MicroStrategy.
It’s also managed to flip strategists such as Fraser-Jenkins, the co-head of Bernstein Research’s portfolio strategy team, who wrote earlier this month that he had changed his mind “about bitcoin’s role in asset allocation.”
Ray Dalio, co-chairman of the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, warned last month that governments will move to “outlaw” Bitcoin if it continues to grow and starts to become “material,” reports Forbes. But the skeptic softened his tone in a recent ask-me-anything thread on Reddit, noting that the top crypto could “serve as a diversifier” to gold.
Crypto proponents are in full force on Wednesday with bullish remarks. Real Vision co-founder Raoul Pal is calling Bitcoin “the world’s best trade” while Edward Snowden tweeted one word: Bitcoin.
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