Bitcoin Peaks at US $ 34,000; expert predicts more profit

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, surpassed $ 34,000, just weeks after passing another major milestone.

The currency rose as much as 7.8 percent to $ 34,182.75, before falling to about $ 33,970 as of 3:05 pm yesterday in Singapore. It advanced nearly 50 percent last month, when it topped $ 20,000 for the first time.

The latest gains top a surprising rebound for the controversial digital asset, which rebounded sharply after a severe dip in March last year that saw it lose 25 percent amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photo: Reuters

The coin “will be on its way to $ 50,000 probably in the first quarter of 2021,” said Antoni Trenchev, managing partner and co-founder of Nexo in London, which bills itself as the world’s largest cryptocurrency lender.

Institutional investors returning to their desks this week will likely raise prices further after retail purchases over the holidays, he said.

Bitcoin has been increasingly “adopted into more global investment portfolios as holders expand beyond tech geeks and speculators,” Bloomberg Intelligence commodity strategist Mike McGlone wrote in a note last month. past.

Proponents of the currency have also seized on the narrative that the currency could act as a repository of wealth amid alleged rampant money printing by central banks, even as inflation remains for the most part off.

Bitcoin should eventually rise to around $ 400,000, Guggenheim Investments chief investment officer Scott Minerd told Bloomberg Television in an interview on December 16 last year.

Still, there are reasons to be cautious, in part because cryptocurrencies remain a poorly traded market.

Bitcoin plunged as much as 14 percent on Nov. 26 amid warnings that the asset class was overdue for a correction. A huge increase in price in 2017 was followed by an 83 percent drop that lasted for a year.