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On February 19, 2021, the price of Bitcoin exceeded $53,700, and the circulating market value reached $1 trillion. Compared with the $10,000 position a year ago, the price of Bitcoin has increased by more than 400%.
According to AssetDash, Bitcoin has surpassed Tencent (00700.HK) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) in the global asset market capitalization rankings. The top five listed companies by market capitalization are Apple (NYSE:AAPL), Microsoft (NYSE:MSFT), Saudi Aramco (2222-AB), Amazon (NYSE:AMZN) and Google (NYSE:GOOGL). Bitcoin has risen nearly 90% this year, and Ethereum has risen more than 160%.
Since 2021, Bitcoin has surpassed the 40,000 mark in less than a week after reaching $30,000 on January 2. Prior to that, Bitcoin surpassed $20,000 on December 16, 2020, and it took about half a month for the price to rise from $20,000 to $30,000.
Since January 8, when Bitcoin broke through the new high of $40,000, it has experienced price fluctuations. A month later, it broke through integer barriers one by one. On February 16, the price of Bitcoin reached $50,000. It took 39 days to cross the 10,000 yuan barrier.
At the same time, Ethereum (ETH), which ranks second in market value, has repeatedly hit new highs in the past month, breaking through $1,900. Ethereum broke the 1,000 yuan mark on January 4, 2021. According to the price on the first day of the new year, the price of Ethereum has doubled by 1.6 times, and so far, the increase has exceeded that of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin was born in January 2009. On November 29, 2017, the price of Bitcoin exceeded 10,000 US dollars for the first time, and climbed to around 20,000 US dollars on December 19 of the same year. Since then, the price of Bitcoin has fluctuated rapidly and dropped. On February 1, 2018, the price of Bitcoin fell below five digits and fell below 4,000 US dollars at the end of the year.
In April 2019, the price of Bitcoin continued to rise, climbing above $12,000 in July, and then fell, once fluctuating between $7,000 and $9,000. Since 2020, after breaking through the 10,000-dollar mark in February, the price of Bitcoin briefly fell to $4,000 the following month, and has been basically above $10,000 since August, and has broken through price barriers one by one in November, approaching $20,000.
As of 3:00 a.m. on March 20, 2021, the price of Bitcoin reached a high of over US$55,000.
Giants rush in to reshape the "Spring Festival market"
On February 8, the eve of the Spring Festival, Bitcoin experienced a range of 7,000 US dollars, and then broke through integer barriers one by one. On February 16, the price of Bitcoin broke through the historical high of 50,000 US dollars, about 320,000 yuan.
During this period, Tesla (NasDaq: TSLA) disclosed financial information on February 8, showing that after adjusting the company's investment policy in January, it has invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and is considering starting to accept Bitcoin payments. About a week ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk changed his social account profile to Bitcoin. Now, some economists have suggested that the US Securities and Exchange Commission examine whether Musk has engaged in market manipulation.
Later, Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) CFO Ned Segal mentioned in an interview that he was considering using Bitcoin for employee wages and merchant cryptocurrency payment needs, as well as whether to include Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Uber (NYSE: UBER) CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also recently talked about considering accepting cryptocurrency as a platform payment method, and the company's cash purchase of Bitcoin was rejected.
Payment institutions are catching up. Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of digital asset products at Mastercard (NYSE: MA), said in a statement that some cryptocurrencies will be supported to join its network this year. The article did not specify the currencies to be launched, but said that stablecoins are becoming more and more compliant, and there are hundreds of digital assets that still need to strengthen compliance measures. Mastercard has cooperated with cryptocurrency companies such as BitPay. BitPay said on the 12th that its prepaid cards in cooperation with Mastercard will be able to be placed in Apple Wallet and support Bitcoin for Apply Pay payments. At the same time, Visa (NYSE: V)'s attitude is that if a certain digital currency becomes a recognized medium of exchange, there will be no reason not to add it to the Visa network.
PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) has launched some cryptocurrency trading services for local users in the United States in 2020, and said it will expand the scope to more countries, and its platform Venmo will also open cryptocurrency business.
In addition to technology giants, financial institutions are not far behind. Recently, Roman Regelman, CEO of the old American Bank of New York Mellon, publicly stated that New York Mellon will become the first international bank to announce the provision of digital asset services. Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB) was revealed to plan to create a cryptocurrency custody platform for institutional clients. Morgan Stanley's Cointerpoint Global team was rumored to be considering investing in Bitcoin.
The enthusiasm of large international institutions to participate in the cryptocurrency industry was once seen when Facebook launched the Libra project. Initially, the basket of assets anchored by Libra included multiple currencies and government debt. Under regulatory pressure and resistance from multiple parties, PayPal and Visa withdrew from the Libra Association. In December 2020, the Libra project was renamed Diem, and its goal became to launch a digital currency backed by a single currency, the US dollar, pending regulatory approval.
Recently, Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, wrote an article about his views on Bitcoin. The article mentioned that the risks facing Bitcoin include government bans. Soon after, the Indian government said it would introduce a law to ban the use of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin in the country and called for the issuance of a national digital currency.
There was a saying in the cryptocurrency industry that "Spring Festival market" would cause a drop if holders "sold coins for the Spring Festival". As for Bitcoin, since its birth in 2009, the price exceeded 10 million US dollars in 2013. Since 2016, its price has shown a slight decline in the days before the Spring Festival and rebounded during the holiday. The downward adjustment has no obvious impact on the price.
It has become a consensus that large institutions' allocation of alternative investments has injected capital into Bitcoin. According to BitInfoChats data, there are currently 2,435 "whales" holding more than 1,000 Bitcoins.
Moutai boss who holds a large stake in the company "comes to his senses" and buys Bitcoin ETF
Song Jiaji's team at the Blockchain Research Institute of Guosheng Securities once mentioned that if the Bitcoin ETF is not approved by the SEC for a long time, cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase encounter obstacles in listing, and listed companies encounter obstacles in purchasing Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin will come under pressure.
On February 18, the Toronto Stock Exchange announced that the world's first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund ETF was listed.
The first Bitcoin ETF was launched by Canadian company Purpose Investments, named Purpose Bitcoin ETF (TSX: BTCC), which is stored offline by Gemini Trust. BTCC was priced at 10 Canadian dollars per share. According to data from the Toronto Stock Exchange, BTCC.B currently has a maximum price of 11 Canadian dollars.
According to data from the Toronto Stock Exchange, as of noon local time on the 19th, BTCC.B's trading volume jumped to fifth place. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchanas released information saying that BTCC's trading volume on the first day of listing reached US$200 million. Statistics show that BTCC's trading volume on the first day was US$165 million. According to multiple media reports, Dan Bin, chairman of Shenzhen Oriental Harbor Investment Management Co., Ltd., who was once famous for his heavy investment in Moutai (600519), said on Weibo that he had purchased 1% of the Bitcoin ETF fund.
Dan Bin replied to netizens, "I didn't understand (Bitcoin) before, but now I think what ARK'Bull Market Queen' said makes sense." ARK founder Catherine Wood recently pointed out in an interview with the media that if all S&P 500 companies take out 10% of the cash on their balance sheets to allocate Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin will increase by $400,000 accordingly.
On February 19, the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund Evolve Bitcoin ETF (TSX: EBIT) under Canadian fund company Evolve Funds Group Inc. was listed.
Li Lianxuan, chief researcher of OKEx, previously commented that in an economic environment of high inflation and low growth, in order to avoid the loss of nominal principal and the need to pursue higher returns, investors' demand for hoarding cash has changed. He believes that the shift of major central banks around the world to a moderately tight monetary policy may have a negative impact on Bitcoin prices. In addition, the investigation into the US dollar stablecoin USDT has not yet been implemented, and some industry insiders believe that this is a potential threat to the cryptocurrency market. (Blue Whale Finance) |
