The pace of gains for the cryptocurrency, however, has cooled, which could indicate that ‘a pullback may be coming’
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Published Dec 16, 2024 • 2 minute read
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Bitcoin rose to a record high on president-elect Donald Trump’s support for digital assets and optimism about the upcoming inclusion of MicroStrategy Inc., an accumulator of the token, in a key US stock gauge.
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The largest virtual currency rose more than 3.5 per cent at one point on Monday in Asia to an unprecedented US$106,493, exceeding its previous peak from Dec. 5. MicroStrategy announced Monday that it bought another US$1.5 billion of Bitcoin in the past week.
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Trump is moving toward creating a friendly regulatory backdrop for digital assets, undoing a crackdown imposed by President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration. The Republican has also backed the idea of a strategic national Bitcoin stockpile, though many question the feasibility of the proposal.
A lot of people are “basing their expectation on a much more favourable administration,” Aya Kantorovich, co-founder of institutional crypto platform August, said on Bloomberg Television. The optimism is reflected in demand for exchange-traded funds investing in digital assets, she added.
On Friday, Nasdaq Global Indexes said MicroStrategy will join the Nasdaq 100 Index, the US technology stock gauge tracked by an array of investment funds. The software maker has transformed into a leveraged bet on Bitcoin as the company raises billions of dollars to plow into the digital asset.
“Now that MicroStrategy is in Nasdaq, index funds may buy its shares, and that will help the company to raise more equity to buy more Bitcoin,” said Sean McNulty, director of trading at liquidity provider Arbelos Markets.
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It was the sixth consecutive Monday that the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based firm announced purchases of the digital asset. It owns about US$45 billion in Bitcoin, making MicroStrategy the latest publicly-traded corporate owner of the cryptocurrency.
The decision to add MicroStrategy to the Nasdaq 100 represents a major stamp of institutional acceptance for its controversy-courting founder, Michael Saylor, whose disdain for Wall Street convention has helped spur a 500 per cent rally in its shares this year and made him a hero to Bitcoin bulls.
The original cryptocurrency, which has more than doubled this year, changed hands around US$103,900 as of 8:37 a.m. on Monday in New York. Smaller tokens such as second-ranked Ether also pushed higher.
Bitcoin through Sunday cemented a seven-week winning streak, the longest such run since 2021. But the pace of gains cooled more recently, which could be an indication that “a pullback may be coming,” IG Australia Pty Market Analyst Tony Sycamore wrote in a note.
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US ETFs investing directly in Bitcoin have attracted US$12.2 billion of net inflows since Trump’s victory in the presidential election on Nov. 5. Subscriptions for similar products for Ether have reached US$2.8 billion over the same period.
—With assistance from Adam Haigh.
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