News
Bitcoin price briefly exceeds $69,000 for new all-time high
- By Joe Tidy and Liv McMahon
- Cyber Correspondent & Technology Reporter
March 5, 2024
Image source, Getty Images
The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, briefly hit a new all-time high of over $69,000.
It surpassed the previous record set in November 2021, although by 2022 the value of Bitcoin had fallen to $16,500.
The new price surge was driven by US financial giants investing billions in buying bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency rose to around $69,200 shortly after 1500 GMT on Tuesday, before falling again. It was trading around $62,185 at 9:00 p.m. GMT.
The value of Bitcoin has soared more than 50% in the past month, according to cryptocurrency market data platform CoinMarketCap.
Carol Alexander, professor of finance at the University of Sussex, said its price could surpass its new record high, but warned the crypto was “notoriously volatile.”
“Too often in the past, the price fall was timed in such a way that ordinary investors who bought Bitcoin during the bubble were the ones who lost,” she told the BBC.
This new record represents another dramatic moment in Bitcoin’s turbulent history.
It was invented in 2009 by one or more people calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto – their true identity remains a mystery.
Intended as a way to create money for the Internet, its roots lie in an anti-establishment philosophy encouraging people to live outside the existing power structure of financial institutions and governments.
However, its new record value is precisely because these established companies have invested billions of dollars to acquire it.
This was made possible because in January 2024, US regulators reluctantly approved several spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
This allowed giant investment firms like Blackrock, Fidelity, and Grayscale to sell products based on the price of Bitcoin.
Between them, they purchased hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, rapidly increasing in value.
Professor Alexander told the BBC that these new entrants are “attracting institutional investors to Bitcoin and putting considerable upward pressure on prices.”
But she added that Bitcoin’s “halving” event, expected to take place in April, could also influence the cryptocurrency’s value.
“In the past, these events have been accompanied by price spikes,” she explained.
Wild fluctuations
For many Bitcoin holders, this will be a time of celebration, as their own wealth will have increased significantly.
But history suggests they should prepare for that to change.
Bitcoin’s value fell to an 18-month low of nearly $20,000 in June 2022 as investors sought to cut ties with riskier investments amid a gloomy global economic backdrop.
The price of the cryptocurrency fell further later that year when FTX – the massive cryptocurrency exchange founded by so-called “king of crypto” Sam Bankman-Fried – collapsed into bankruptcy in November 2022.
Its ups and downs continued throughout 2023, but it managed to rally back to trade above $40,000 towards the end of the year.
It’s not just companies and individual investors who closely follow these fluctuations.
In Central America, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has embraced cryptocurrency.
THE Leader in love with Bitcoin has spent more than $100 million of its developing country’s public money to buy nearly 3,000 bitcoins over the past few years.
His investment is now worth about 60% more than he paid for it. Although no public records have been released on the details.