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Bitcoin accounts for around two-thirds of the cryptocurrency’s market value, which now exceeds $ 1 trillion.
Bitcoin climbed to $ 40,000 for the first time, doubling its value in less than a month and pushing the total market value of cryptocurrencies past $ 1 trillion.
Cryptocurrencies have crossed the mark after a five-fold increase in market value over the past year, according to data from tracker CoinGecko. Strategists cited demand from hedge retail traders, trendy quantitative funds, wealthy and even institutional investors as the reasons for the surge.
Bitcoin rose 11% Thursday to $ 40,065 and more than quadrupled last year, according to a price composite compiled by Bloomberg. It makes up about two-thirds of the cryptocurrency’s market value, followed by Ether at around 13%, according to data from CoinGecko.
“Bitcoin continues to defy all expectations and skeptics,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder and managing partner of Nexo, a crypto lender. “It leaves all other assets behind in its wake, as it has done year after year over the past decade.”
Coinbase Inc., America’s largest digital exchange, said it was experiencing “connectivity issues” on both the website and the mobile app for a second day.
Digital coins are leaping into a world awash with fiscal and monetary incentives, even as some commentators fear an inevitable collapse and others question the basic integrity of crypto markets. Bitcoin supporters say it offers a hedge against a weak dollar and the risk of faster inflation, much like gold, while critics denounce the intellectual soundness of the comparison of the two assets.
“The more people feel their assets, especially liquid assets like fiat currencies, are eroding, the more they will look for alternatives,” said Geoffrey Morphy, chairman of Canadian crypto-mining company Bitfarms Ltd. .
Active Bitcoin accounts are nearing their all-time high at the end of 2017, according to researcher Flipside Crypto – perhaps a sign that some holders are considering selling. Less than 2% of accounts hold 95% of Bitcoin’s supply, so a few large exchanges can impact prices. The last big Bitcoin boom started to implode in late 2017.
Some traders have pointed out that JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s long-term Bitcoin price prediction at $ 146,000 could fuel the rally. Others said sentiment was bolstered by an update to U.S. regulations that allows a less volatile class of coins to be used by banks for payments.
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