SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Bitcoin hit a new record high of $ 60 shy of $ 50,000 on Tuesday, extending a sharp rally that is largely driven by large investors starting to take digital assets seriously.
The first most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin hit $ 49,938 and has gained about 70% this year, most of it after electric carmaker Tesla said it bought $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin and that he would accept the money as payment.
Tesla’s move was the latest in a series of major investments that have pushed bitcoin from a financial margin to the balance sheets of companies and Wall Street dealing desks, as U.S. companies and traditional money managers have begun buying much of it .
The high cryptocurrency, which was nearly worthless a decade ago when software developer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoins for two kittens, surpassed only $ 20,000 in mid-December, but so far it has been difficult to crack $ 50,000 after a few attempts.
“Bitcoin has been tied to a field for the past four or five days, proposing either a mobile stop or a consolidation period,” said Justin d’Anethan, sales manager at digital asset company Diginex in Hong Kong.
“We believe in the latter,” he said, as strong recent demand has slowed down the ultimate supply of bitcoin.
Bitcoin last traded just short of its new record at $ 49,045 while cryptocurrency competitor ethereum also held near its own high of $ 1,879 made this week. went.
In addition to Tesla, bitcoin has attracted unprecedented flows from investors large and small in recent months and posted new milestones on the way to greater adoption as a means of exchange.
The cryptocurrency was created by the secretive Satoshi Nakamoto, who does not know its true identity and is based on blockchain technology that acts as a public ledger of transactions. It started circulating in 2009, mostly among speculators – something that is starting to change.
Business software company MicroStrategy made its first of several multi-million-dollar bitcoin purchases in August and a number of Wall Street fund managers, such as billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, are now looking good on the fund .
PayPal allows customers to use bitcoin at their merchants while Mastercard prepares to do the same, transactions that offer both opportunity and risk.
“The more digital money comes, the more we should expect regulators to pay attention,” said Mike O’Rourke, chief marketing strategy at JonesTrading.
Reporting with Tom Westbrook in Singapore, Alun John in Hong Kong and Megan Davies in New York; Edited by Alison Williams