Bitcoin climbed to a record high, extending a rally sparked by President-elect Donald Trump’s support for digital assets and his plan to turn the US into the dominant force in the sector.
The largest token rose more than 3 per cent at one point on Monday in Asia to an unprecedented $106,493, exceeding its previous peak from December 5. The advance helped to boost sentiment in the wider crypto market.
Trump is moving toward creating a friendly regulatory backdrop for digital assets, undoing a crackdown imposed by President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration. The Republican has also backed the idea of a strategic national Bitcoin stockpile, though many question the feasibility of the latter idea.
A lot of people are “basing their expectation on a much more favorable administration,” Aya Kantorovich, co-founder of institutional crypto platform August, said on Bloomberg Television. The optimism is reflected in demand for exchange-traded funds investing in digital assets, she added.
On Friday, Nasdaq Global Indexes said Bitcoin accumulator MicroStrategy Inc. will join the Nasdaq 100 Index. The software maker’s metamorphosis into a leveraged bet on Bitcoin has transfixed Wall Street. The company has been raising capital to plow billions of dollars into the digital asset.
Bitcoin through Sunday cemented a seven-week winning streak, the longest such run since 2021. But the pace of gains cooled more recently, which could be an indication that “a pullback may be coming,” IG Australia Pty Market Analyst Tony Sycamore wrote in a note.
The original cryptocurrency changed hands at $106,215 as of 8:39 a.m. on Monday in Singapore. Smaller tokens such as second-ranked Ether, XRP and meme-crowd favorite Dogecoin posted increases too.
US ETFs investing directly in Bitcoin have attracted $12.2 billion of net inflows since Trump’s victory in the presidential election on Nov. 5. Subscriptions for similar products for Ether have reached $2.8 billion over the same period.