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REUTERS: Digital currency Bitcoin extended its record rally on Saturday, starting the year with a surge of more than $ 30,000 for the first time, with more and more traders and investors betting that it is on its way to becoming a mainstream payment method. .
The price of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency traded as high as $ 33,099 on Saturday, with almost all other markets closed during the first weekend of 2021. Lastly, it was up around 12 percent to $ 32,883.
Bitcoin advanced more than 300 percent in 2020, and with the last higher leg it has added more than 50 percent since it crossed $ 20,000 just two weeks ago.
The blockchain currency has only been around for a decade or so, and 2020 has seen demand grow from larger American investors, attracted by its perceived inflation-hedging qualities and potential for quick profits, as well as expectations that it becomes a conventional payment. method.
Investors said the limited supply of bitcoins, produced by so-called “mining” computers that validate blocks of transactions competing to solve math puzzles, has helped fuel upward moves in recent days.
Some also saw it as a safe haven during the COVID-19 pandemic, similar to gold.
“The asset is very likely to exceed $ 100,000 per coin,” Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, a global blockchain project, wrote in an email on Saturday. “People have been constantly losing faith in their government’s currencies for years, and monetary policies resulting from the economic impact of the coronavirus have only accelerated this decline.”
It is listed on numerous exchanges, the largest of which is Coinbase, which is preparing to go public to become the first major US cryptocurrency exchange to list on Wall Street.
Multiple competing cryptocurrencies use similar blockchain or electronic ledger technology. Ethereum, the second largest, gained 465% in 2020 and was up almost 7% on Saturday.
(The story corrects paragraph 8 to clarify the reference to the Coinbase listing.)
(Reporting by Alden Bentley; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Diane Craft and Andrea Ricci)
