Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, topped $34,000 (€28,000) just weeks after passing another major milestone.
The currency gained as much as 9.8 per cent to $34,792.48, before slipping to about $33,500 as of 3pm on Sunday in London. It advanced almost 50 per cent in December, when it breached $20,000 for the first time.
The latest gains top an eye-popping rally for the controversial digital asset in 2020, which rebounded sharply after a severe crash in March that saw it lose 25 per cent amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The currency “will be on the road to $50,000 probably in the first quarter of 2021”, said Antoni Trenchev, managing partner and co-founder of Nexo in London, which bills itself as the world’s biggest crypto lender. Institutional investors returning to their desks this week will likely boost prices further after retail buying over the holidays, he said.
Investment portfolios
Bitcoin has increasingly been “embraced in more global investment portfolios as holders expand beyond tech geeks and speculators,” Bloomberg Intelligence commodity strategist Mike McGlone wrote in a note last month. Proponents of the currency have also seized on the narrative that the coin could act as a store of wealth amid supposed rampant central-bank money printing, even as inflation remains mostly muted.
Bitcoin should eventually climb to about about $400,000, Scott Minerd, chief investment officer of Guggenheim Investments, told Bloomberg Television in a December 16th interview.
Still, there are reasons to be cautious, partly since Bitcoin remains a thinly traded market. The currency slumped as much as 14 per cent on November 26th amid warnings that the asset class was overdue a correction. The big run-up in price in 2017 was followed by an 83 per cent rout that lasted a year.
- Bloomberg
