Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- Bitcoin briefly surpassed $98,000, nearing the $100,000 milestone, driven by investor optimism.
- President elect-DonaldTrump supports a crypto-friendly regulatory environment, boosting market confidence.
- Experts caution of potential volatility.
SALT LAKE CITY — Cryptocurrency bitcoin hit another all-time high early Thursday, briefly breaching the $98,000 mark for the first time ever as it continues a surge on the heels of the presidential election earlier this month.
As of midday Thursday, Bitcoin was trading at just over $97,500 per token, according to data tracking by CoinGecko. Industry watchers believe the digital currency is on the path to surpassing $100,000, riding a wave of positive investor energy following former President Donald Trump's successful reelection bid. While once a vocal skeptic of the cryptocurrency sector, Trump has since changed his stance and made campaign promises of a crypto friendly overhaul of the federal regulatory framework for digital currencies when he's back in office.
Rob Ginsberg, an analyst at Wolfe Research, predicted bitcoin's value could break $100,000 as early as Thursday in a cryptocurrency market that's ripe for continued value escalations under current dynamics.
"Looking back at previous moves of this magnitude, BTC has historically either gone into a consolidation period or ignored the overbought condition as investors pile in," Ginsberg said in a Wednesday note, per CNBC.
"Being that we are just breaking out of one of those long consolidation periods, and price is currently at a new high ... something tells us the chase is on," he added. "The real test will come when the major psychological level of $100,000 is likely hit in coming weeks."
What Donald Trump says about crypto
Among Trump's repeated pledges during his campaign to create a friendly regulatory environment for the sector was a promise made during a July keynote speech at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville that, under his administration, "the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry."
Trump has also hinted at the possibility of creating a bitcoin-based strategic currency reserve. And he previously promised that, if elected, he would remove the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, who has been leading the U.S. government's crackdown on the crypto industry and repeatedly called for more oversight, per a report from the Associated Press.
The cryptocurrency market has exploded since bitcoin made its public debut in 2009, and the current portfolio of digital tokens numbers in the tens of thousands. Market volatility has been a benchmark of these virtual currencies as regulators in the U.S. and around the world have struggled to assemble a framework that suits the decentralized currencies.
Financial experts warn that even as bitcoin and other digital currencies appear to be on an upward swing, similar value jumps in the past have also been followed by downswings.
"Investors should only dabble in crypto with money that they can be prepared to lose," Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, told the Associated Press last week. "Because we've seen these wild swings in the past."
What is cryptocurrency?
If the world of cryptocurrencies is still seeming rather, well, cryptic, here's a handy breakdown from Investopedia:
- A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that is secured by cryptography, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend.
- Many cryptocurrencies are decentralized networks based on blockchain technology — a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers.
- A defining feature of cryptocurrencies is that they are generally not issued by any central authority, rendering them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation.
