Bitcoin Breaks $19K, New All-Time High Seems Imminent
Bitcoin (BTC) passed above $19,000 on Tuesday, after rallying $7,000 in one month. The leading cryptocurrency is now within sight of its all-time high of $19,783 reached on Dec. 17, 2017.
The price of bitcoin was $19,001 at press time, representing a 2% gain in the past 24 hours, according to the CoinDesk 20 index.
This took place after bitcoin’s price broke the $17,000 and then $18,000 levels within the same week.
On Friday, Rick Rieder, chief investment officer at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said on CNBC bitcoin could take the place of gold to a large extent because crypto is “so much more functional than passing a bar of gold around.”
The market capitalization of bitcoin also hit its all-time high this week at about $329 billion, according to data provided by crypto analytic firm CryptoQuant.
Guy Hirsch, managing director for US at eToro, said 2020’s bull market “debunks” the idea that bitcoin is a “tulip bubble” because “tulips never had a second wave of buying the same way bitcoin has.”
With retail on-ramp platforms including PayPal and CashApp being more prevalent in 2020 than 2017, bitcoin’s price could break $20,000 “in the not-too-distant” future, Hirsch added, predicting retail investors will kick in the market and propel the price.
All but two of the other coins from the CoinDesk 20, including ether and XRP, have also been in green in the past 24 hours.
With more institutional investors entering the bitcoin market as well as miners not liquidating their positions, “it appears likely that price will continue to rise,” according to a recent newsletter from CryptoQuant.
