On December 16, 2020, the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), revisited the USD 20,000 level after a bumpy three-year journey. Two months later, on February 16, 2021, BTC has entered the USD 50,000 zone for the first time in its history on signs of increasing demand. (Updated at 13:03 UTC with an announcement by MicroStrategy. Updated at 13:45 UTC with the latest market data. Updated at 14:01 UTC with a comment from Eric Wall and new reactions.)
At 13:43 UTC, BTC trades at USD 49,086, dropping from its new all-time high of USD 50,350 reached today, per Coingecko.com. The price is still up by almost 3% in a day and 47% in a week. It rallied by 35% in a month and 396% in a year. As volatility increased today, in the past 4 hours, USD 167m worth of BTC trading positions were liquidated, per bybt.com
BTC price chart:
“In the institutional space, I expect this milestone and the recent Tesla investment to break the mold for many corporate copycats. A psychological barrier remains for the retail despite Bitcoin’s divisibility, but I reckon this will soon be dispelled too as cryptocurrencies edge closer to mass adoption,” Antoni Trenchev, Co-Founder and CEO of major crypto lender Nexo, said in an emailed comment. He predicted that BTC would hit USD 50,000 by end-of-year.
Meanwhile, one of the most bullish non-crypto companies, US-based software developer MicroStrategy announced today it once again intends to borrow up to USD 690m and spend it on BTC. At the end of January, the company owned approximately BTC 70,784 (currently USD 3.5bn).
Also, according to Adam Liposky, Ecosystem Operations Lead at Pocket Network, a blockchain data ecosystem for Web3 applications, this bull run “is illustrative of the widespread adoption of initial blockchain implementations, typified by Bitcoin and Ethereum.”
“This is just the beginning,” he said.
However, as reported, Philip Gradwell, Chief Economist at Chainalysis, said recently that this rally is due to an expectation of future mass adoption, rather than actual mass adoption today.
“People are trying to get in before this expected adoption and they are buying in a market with very constrained supply, so prices are climbing. If adoption materializes then this will be a good bet, but if it does not then the market could turn,” he said.
Also, according to Mike McGlone, a commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, BTC volatility is likely to continue rising in the near term and remain elevated until it settles in around its next plateau. The strategist told Bloomberg that USD 100,000 per BTC “may be a longer term target.”
Meanwhile, Eric Wall, Chief Investment Officer of the crypto hedge fund outfit Arcane Assets, claims that USD 50,000 is a fair price for bitcoin.
“At USD 50,00, it’s still below 10% of gold’s total market capitalization. Given bitcoin’s current seat in the world, its progress as an investment class, and all its associated risks, it seems fair. It’s neither low nor euphoric,” he said, adding that with the M2 money supply rapidly expanding, bitcoin would have to be sort of unique to remain only “fairly” valued, and not priced at a premium.
“We’re probably going even higher. It’s not very pricey given general market froth. And there doesn’t seem to be any reason why we’d top out before we’d reach a point of extreme froth. Especially not for an asset like bitcoin, the king of froth and speculation,” Wall said.
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Reactions:
BREAKING: #bitcoin crosses above $50,000 for the first time. @JoeSquawk and @andrewrsorkin discuss what the #btc mi… https://t.co/nhplYs6wXj
The Microstrategy seminar for BTC as a corporate treasuries strategy must have given them a good gauge on new money… https://t.co/thGDiEDath
$50k #bitcoin such a powerful psychological level with inevitable sell wall, needed something powerful to punch thr… https://t.co/yLHQp8d9NK
Like how greedy do you have to be to not only oversize tremendously but without any real indication that price want… https://t.co/ihjusF4rDh
#Bitcoin pops through $50K. Divergences persist, but meaningless. So far. https://t.co/y1INVRmUFG
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