BitcoinBTC and cryptocurrencies, including major coins ethereum and XRPXRP, have roared back in 2023 following a disastrous crash last year (with some expecting 2024 to be even bigger).
The bitcoin price has topped $45,000 per bitcoin this week, helping the combined ethereum, XRP and crypto market climb above $1.5 trillion for the first time since yearly 2022, as expectations soar that Wall Street could be about to make its long-awaited entrance to the crypto market.
Now, as traders “mark their calendars” for an important exchange-traded fund (ETF) update, the chief executive of U.S. crypto bank Custodia, Caitlin Long, has fanned the flames of a rumor that another country could be about to follow in El Salvador’s footsteps and begin buying bitcoin.
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“I caught up with a big bitcoiner and investor in bitcoin infrastructure [companies] who said he doesn’t think this rally is all about the spot ETF,” Long, a Wall Street veteran who founded Custodia, previously known as Avanti, in early 2020, posted to X and linking to a September report that Qatar’s head of state had visited El Salvador.
“He thinks it’s about this too,” Long wrote. “I missed this at the time but looking into it this morning, it seems there wasn’t much coverage at the time.”
Qatar and El Salvador, which made bitcoin legal tender in September 2021, signed various agreements during Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani’s official visit to the country in September, Qatar News Agency reported at the time.
“The rumors are getting very loud on this,” Max Keiser, an outlandish bitcoin investor who is working with El Salvador on its bitcoin strategy, posted to X, adding without evidence that Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is “rumored to looking to buy $500 billion bitcoin.”
El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele this week prematurely celebrated the country’s $120 million bitcoin investment crossing back into profit after years in the red.
“El Salvador’s bitcoin investments are in the black,” Bukele posted to X, around 24 hours ahead of the bitcoin price crossing the $42,000 level that made the country’s bitcoin investments profitable and adding there had been “literally thousands of articles and hit pieces that ridiculed our supposed losses.”
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“El Salvador’s bitcoin adoption and further adoption by other nations or major companies could bolster the value and credibility of bitcoin,” analysts at bitcoin and crypto exchange Bitfinex said in emailed comments. “A major development has been Argentina electing a pro-bitcoin head of state in an economy struggling with inflation.”
Last month, Samson Mow, chief executive of bitcoin technology company Jan3 and an advisor to El Salvador during its adoption of bitcoin, said he’s hoping to next year meet with Argentina’s new president Javier Milei, a bitcoin fan and self-described libertarian anarcho-capitalist.
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