/https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5fc513289dd01aeb81cf1ec8/0x0.jpg?cropX1=0&cropX2=4500&cropY1=232&cropY2=2764 "The market rises $ 750 billion, almost doubling this month as Bitcoin hits new highs")
Top line
The massive recovery of Bitcoin continued over the weekend, pushing the market capitalization of the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency to $ 1.2 trillion on Saturday, and leading to the biggest monthly gain in the broadest crypto market ever recorded, as institutional adoption helps to pour billions of dollars into the nascent space.
Bitcoin’s new high, above $ 57,500, helped the crypto market post its biggest monthly gain in … [+]
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Key Facts
As of 9:30 am ET, the price of bitcoin has risen 9% in the past 24 hours to around $ 57,350, pushing weekly earnings to more than 20%, according to CoinMarketCap.
The prices of ether and binance coins, the second and third largest tokens in the world, rose 13% and 120%, respectively, last week, helping the broader crypto market to accumulate a total value of almost $ 1.8 trillion. – almost twice as much as its $ 1 trillion market capitalization in early February.
Experts, including Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, are attributing much of the gains to a flurry of institutional adoption in recent weeks, after electric car maker Tesla released a $ 1.5 billion investment in bitcoin earlier this month .
Publicly traded MicroStrategy, one of bitcoin’s largest corporate shareholders, raised nearly $ 1.1 billion in debt on Friday to buy more of the pioneering cryptocurrency – almost double what the company initially expected to raise due to the wave of interest .
On Thursday and Friday, the first two North American bitcoin-traded funds debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange, snatching more than $ 200 million from investors.
Despite fueling much of the optimistic cryptography in recent weeks, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Earlier on Saturday, bitcoin and ether prices now “look high”, although he also indicated that the cryptocurrency may serve as better protection against inflation than gold, the original safe-haven asset.
Amazing fact
Bitcoin’s price hit a new high of $ 57,505 around 7:45 am on Saturday – almost 6 times its value a year ago.
Key Background
Recent market gains have already overshadowed the ephemeral price craze that began in 2017, during which prices rose 15-fold to an almost $ 20,000 high, partly thanks to apps like Coinbase that made trading easier for investors individual. This bubble proved unsustainable, and the price of bitcoin plummeted 80% in late 2018, as countries like South Korea began to crack down on cryptocurrency trading.
What we don’t know
The biggest question mark around the future of cryptocurrency is regulation, which ended up causing cryptocurrency prices to plummet three years ago. Securities and Exchange Commission officials hinted that further scrutiny may be underway, but not all experts are convinced that it will hurt the market. “Given its still incipient and volatile nature, we believe that less than 5% of public companies will follow the path of investing in bitcoin in some capacity in the next 12 to 18 months, but they can rise significantly as more regulation and acceptance of that currency takes over of the future, “Ives said on Friday.
Tangent
Even bitcoin’s staunch critics are looking forward to the token amid recent gains. Billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital who once called bitcoin “a lie”, called bitcoin “the stimulus asset” in a tweet Thursday, alluding to concerns that rising government spending could trigger problematic inflation and sink the dollar’s value, while boosting safe-haven assets like bitcoin and gold.
Further Reading
Bitcoin’s market value exceeds $ 1 trillion amid Tesla’s rise (Forbes)
Bitcoin hits new high after Tesla says it invested $ 1.5 billion (Forbes)
Not just Tesla: large institutions continue to accumulate bitcoins as prices exceed $ 50,000 (Forbes)