Bitcoin breaks through the $60,000 barrier for the first time
Bitcoin broke records again and hit $60,000 for the first time in its history, boosted, analysts said, by the US stimulus package.
The cryptocurrency had risen to $60,197 by 12:34 GMT and was still hovering around that symbolic threshold by early Saturday afternoon. It rose to $61,683 at 20:44 GMT, before retreating a little. It was trading at $61,284 shortly before 01:00 GMT on Sunday, according to specialist site CoinMarketCap,
Bitcoin is currently breaking records and has tripled in value in the past three months: in mid-December it was still worth just $20,000, and just a month ago it surpassed the $50,000 mark.
Bitcoin was born in 2009, just one year after the economic crisis unleashed in 2008. In this context, the creators, whose identity is unknown, although they presented themselves under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, sought to give birth to a currency that would be beyond the control of the monetary authorities so that they would not have the power to decide its value. In addition, they wanted to avoid the cost of international transfers as it was a global currency.
As it is not dependent on any national economy, its value frequently suffers dizzying ups and downs. For example, in 2017 its value dropped to $1,000, but between November and December of the same year it quadrupled.
In recent days, "Bitcoin has rallied as investors await the imminent arrival of the checks" provided for consumers in the US stimulus plan, Markets.com analyst Neil Wilson explained in a note on Friday.
Americans are expected to receive the first checks and transfers of $1,400 per person from the $1.9 trillion plan, ratified by President Joe Biden, this weekend, the administration said on Friday. "The US stimulus checks will allow small investors to put some of their funds into Bitcoin," also judges Naeem Aslam, an analyst at AvaTrade, who says he expects the rise to continue "given that buying bitcoin has become much easier now".
The cryptocurrency's exponential growth worries some market observers, who do not rule out a sharp correction or even the bursting of a bubble.
While some are wary of the volatility of the Bitcoin market, others believe that the situation is very different from 2017, when prices surged before plummeting in early 2018.
In addition to investment funds and some companies such as US automaker Tesla, which has invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency, many individuals are buying fractions of bitcoins, taking advantage of the numerous platforms that have flourished in recent years.
After a decade of existence, institutional investors have jumped on the cryptocurrency bandwagon. In addition, major players in the global payments ecosystem also incorporated bitcoins as a means of payment in their systems. In addition, the pandemic generated the worst downturn in economic activity globally, prompting central banks in major markets to inject record levels of liquidity that inflated financial asset prices across the board.
Online payment giant Paypal has also taken the plunge by creating a bitcoin trading line, further boosting the virtual currency. Paypal's move represents a change of heart among investment funds that have long been wary of the randomly traded currency. And although experts say that many private investors are still hesitant, they say that they are waiting in the wings, and do not rule out record highs in the short term.
