Thanks to Trump? Bitcoin breaks through $3,500 and rises by more than 90% in less than a month

The "hard fork" failed to become a real crisis, and the mutual attacks between Trump and North Korea also brought an opportunity for a new round of increases in Bitcoin.

As the exchange of words between Trump and North Korea intensified geopolitical risks this week, Bitcoin has been rising sharply this week. After crossing $3,000 for the first time, it has successively broken through the $3,400 and $3,500 levels, setting new historical records.

The July U.S. CPI released before the U.S. stock market opened on Friday was lower than market expectations for five consecutive months. Also before the market opened, Trump once again issued a strong warning to North Korea, saying that "a military solution is now fully in place. North Korea should not take unwise actions. I hope Kim Jong-un will find another way."

Bitcoin continued to rise after the opening of the U.S. stock market. Data from the Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp showed that at around 22:05 Beijing time, the Bitcoin trading price hit a new intraday high of US$3,550, setting a new record.

Since the "hard fork" on August 1, the cumulative increase has been nearly 35%. Since the mid-last month when the concerns about the "hard fork" were at their peak, the cumulative increase has exceeded 90%. Financial blog Zerohedge pointed out that this week Bitcoin is expected to achieve the largest single-week increase since the UK's Brexit referendum at the end of June last year.

In other words, the last time Bitcoin surged so much was due to market anxiety over the UK's Brexit referendum.

Industry media CoinTelegraph pointed out that the recent tensions between the United States and North Korea have had a certain impact on the global market, causing shocks to some major assets, but Bitcoin, which is not pegged to other currencies and has no centralized control, has not been negatively affected by these news at all.

Not only that, judging from the recent market conditions, digital currencies such as Bitcoin seem to have become a new safe haven for investors.

Wall Street Journal mentioned earlier that the prices of risky assets fell this week. The S&P 500 index fell 1.57% in a week, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.7% in a week, the Nikkei 225 index fell 1.5% in a week, and the South Korean Composite Index fell 5.7% in two weeks.

This week, Bitcoin crossed the $3,000 mark for the first time, and the price of Ethereum rose 67% in just two weeks. In comparison, the price of gold rose by less than 8%, and the yen rose by less than 5%. Their safe-haven properties pale in comparison to digital currencies.

Ron Chernesky, CEO of digital currency trading platform InvestFeed, believes that as geopolitical crises escalate, the risks of holding stocks, fiat currencies and government bonds increase, and digital currencies have little correlation with these assets, making them the first choice for hedging.

He said that in order to cope with the risk of a market crash that could occur at any time, investors are transferring part of their assets to digital currencies.

Charles Hugh Smith, blogger at the financial blog OfTwoMinds, also recently suggested that mainstream opinion does not understand that the true demand for Bitcoin will not be known until a global financial crisis causes a loss of confidence in central banks and politicized capital controls.