By Ekin Genç
3 min read
Up and up Bitcoin’s price goes, rising higher than even the tallest clouds, headed straight “to da moon."
Today, Bitcoin peaked at $57,000, its highest ever price.
Why the rise? The reasons are likely manifold and various; Bitcoin’s bull run is now in full swing.
One obvious candidate is US business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, which yesterday announced that it will sell off $1 billion of debt to buy more Bitcoin. MicroStrategy has done this before: it sold $400 million in convertible senior notes in December, which it added to a pool of money used to buy billions of the coin.
MicroStrategy is headed by CEO Michael Saylor—the crypto critic-turned-evangelist. Industry leaders who spoke to Decrypt credited him for his influence on Tesla’s buy of $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, which has since contributed to the price surge.
The new all-time high comes as the crypto benefits from a recent wave of "mainstreaming".
Last week, BNY Mellon announced that it will invest in crypto for its clients. Industry leaders told Decrypt last week said that the move will change how asset managers view Bitcoin, pushing its price even higher in line with the long-term price predictions by JPMorgan, Guggenheim and others.
Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd said that Bitcoin's long-term price could reach $600,000 and JPMorgan predicted that it could reach $146,000.
The continuous price surge of the last few months has now pushed Bitcoin’s market cap north of $1 trillion. In crypto, the market cap refers to the total number of coins in circulation multiplied by the current market price of each coin. The total market cap of the entire cryptocurrency market first reached $1 trillion in early January, as Decrypt reported. Now, the entire market cap of crypto is $1.7 trillion.
Altcoins—coins that are alternatives to Bitcoin—have also performed swimmingly this week.
The price of Ethereum, the largest alternative cryptocurrency to Bitcoin, today hit $2,010, a jump of 3.81% from yesterday’s $1,933. Ethereum’s weekly price change is an increase of 9.03%.
Binance Coin, or BNB, jumped this week to become the third-largest coin by market cap. Its price increased by 15.97% to $298.72 over the past 24 hours. Its weekly price increase is 124.58%—the highest among top cryptocurrencies. Yesterday, BNB hit an all-time high of $399.
Polkadot, the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, increased 17.15% in the last 24 hours and 29% in the past week. Its current price is $38.12. And Cardano (ADA), the sixth-largest, jumped by 15.53% in the past day and by 14.70% in the past week to today’s price of $1.07.
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