The price of the leading cryptocurrency bitcoin jumped as much as 11% to US$40,394 before dropping to US$3,500 in about half an hour and continues to fluctuate. Bitcoin’s price vacillated as much as 17 percent on Monday. The digital token has more than doubled in less than a month. Strategists have cited demand from speculative retail traders, trend-following quant funds, the rich, and even institutional investors as among the reasons for the surge, Bloomberg reported. The total market value of cryptocurrencies climbed beyond US$1 trillion for the first time Thursday.
Bitcoin continues its massive winning rally.
“Bitcoin continues to defy all expectations and doubters,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder and managing partner of Nexo, a crypto lender. “It’s leaving all other assets trailing in its wake like it’s done a year in, year out for the past decade,” he added. Other cryptocurrencies are also jumping in a world awash with fiscal and monetary stimulus, even as some commentators fear an inevitable bust and others question the basic integrity of crypto markets. Ethereum also jumped above the $1000 mark after a long time.
JPMorgan analysts predict bitcoin could go on to touch $140,000.
As reported earlier, strategists at the leading U.S. bank JPMorgan have been crunching the numbers and comparing Bitcoin to the traditional store of value assets such as gold. Led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the analysts suggested that Bitcoin’s current market capitalization of around $580 billion would have to rise by 4.6 times to create a theoretical price of $146,000. The entire crypto market value has reached over $1 trillion for the first time. The U.S. bank also made a similar prediction in November last year when analysts at the firm suggested that Bitcoin could rise as much as ten times as it competes with gold for institutional investors.
