Bitcoin has risen to $US50,000 level for the first time since late December 2021.
The value of the world’s largest cryptocurrency was boosted by expectations of US interest rate cuts later this year and last month’s approval for US exchange-traded funds designed to track its price.
The cryptocurrency has risen 16.3% so far this year.
The price of ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was up 4.1% at $US2,608.
In early January, the US securities regulator approved the first US spot bitcoin ETFs, a watershed for bitcoin and the broader crypto industry, which had been trying to bring such a product to market for more than a decade.
Investors are also looking eagerly to the next bitcoin “halving,” expected in April, analysts say.
That process is designed to slow the release of bitcoin, whose supply is capped at 21 million tokens (of which 19 million have already been created).
Bitcoin rallied on the previous three halvings, the most recent of which was in 2020.
Global stock markets, meanwhile, are trading near record highs as traders looked for cues on when the US Federal Reserve might begin cutting interest rates.
Analysts and financial market expectations both point to May as a potential start for rate cuts this year.
