Bitcoin powered well past $26,000 hours after breaking $25,000 on Dec. 26, continuing a price spike that began in November when BTC was below $14,000.
At press time, Bitcoin had reached above $26,700 before retreating slightly, according to CoinMarketCap.
The growth has been spurred on by a series of high-profile purchase announcements by mainstream institutional investors in the first cryptocurrency, following the lead of business intelligence firm MicroStrategy. Earlier this month, CEO Michael Saylor announced that the firm had raised $650 million to buy more Bitcoin. That upped its bet on the first cryptocurrency to $1.1 billion since August.
Along with big buys by Wall Street legends like Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones, life insurance giant Mass Mutual poured $100 million into Bitcoin earlier this month. At the time, JPMorgan Managing Director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said:
“MassMutual’s Bitcoin purchases represent another milestone in the Bitcoin adoption by institutional investors… One can see the potential demand that could arise over the coming years as other insurance companies and pension funds follow MassMutual’s example.”
Other recent institutional support came from Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital, which bought $25 million in late December, and Guggenheim Funds Trust, which revealed in late November that its Macro Opportunities Fund may put up to $530 million into the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.
On Dec. 16, Guggenheim CEO Scott Minerd told Bloomberg:
“Our fundamental work shows bitcoin should be worth about $400,000.”
Popular trader Michaël van de Poppe noted on Dec. 26 that despite the new high, the “retail hype” around this new milestone is “not even close” to the previous high in the 2017 bull market.
Earlier in the day he had pointed to $25,800 as an important mark, saying that if it holds as a temporary top, the market’s “next impulse could bring $BTC towards $40,000+.”
And the famed venture capital investor and longtime Bitcoin bull Tim Draper today predicted BTC would hit $250,000 by early 2023.
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January 16, 2018 -
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