Bitcoin crosses $100,000, hitting six-digit mark in rally
Bitcoin surpassed $100,000 for the first time Thursday on the belief that US president-elect Donald Trump will make it his business to de-regulated cryptocurrencies when he assumes office next month.
The digital currency rose to $102,700 in early Asian trading, after an octopus-like rally since the November 5 election of Donald Trump who had promised on the campaign trail that the US will be the "bitcoin and cryptocurrency capital of the world".
The digital unit has risen more than 50 per cent since the tycoon won the poll – and by some 134 per cent since the beginning of the year.
But the unit’s price growth stopped in recent weeks at just under $100,000 as traders waited for new catalysts to enter.
And that came with rumors that Trump has named mega-crypto champion Paul Atkins as the next chair of the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Atkins was an SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008 and in 2009 he founded risk advisory firm Patomak Global Partners, which works with banks, trading firms and crypto-currencies.
A Trump transition team announcement said Atkins was the co-chairman of the Digital Chamber of Commerce, which encourages the use of digital assets, since 2017.
"Paul has a track record of leading on good regulations," Trump wrote in a statement stressing Atkins' support for "solid, new" capital markets.
"He also understands digital assets and other innovations are key to Making America Greater than Ever Before," Trump continued. He would succeed Gary Gensler, who had been in charge of the sector after a 2022 crash.
"Atkins, a conservative legal hawk who has a history of highlighting the SEC’s hard line on crypto companies, will likely lead us in a crypto-friendly direction," Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management said.
"This maneuver has energized the crypto market and given investors a hope for a looser regulatory environment under Atkins’ leadership, as well as the wider Republican campaign for more permissiveness on the flourishing digital asset ecosystem," says DeVos.
Even though he had once called cryptocurrencies a "scam", Trump reversed course and has made the unit an election platform of sorts.
Last September, he had said he and his sons and business partners were setting up a digital money company called World Liberty Financial.
He is even a trusted colleague of the business mogul Elon Musk, whom he said would lead a new US government-efficiency commission to reform federal waste.
Musk apparently raised more than $100 million to win Trump back the White House, pledging his candidacy over and over on his X social media.
"On top of that you have the expectations that he will relax regulations on the crypto industry and now you can start to see why people are in the digital coin and digital currency related stocks," Dan Coatsworth, analyst at investment firm AJ Bell.
And Samer Hasn, founder of XS.com, also said that the potential loosening of rules in the space is encouraging "the expectation of cryptocurrencies becoming increasingly part of the economic system" of the nation.
There has been so much that has been said about cryptocurrency ever since it was invented, from their high volatility to the downfall of several industry giants including the FTX exchange.
Bitcoin is the creation of an author (or creators) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. It was pitched as a way to bypass the big banks by putting together a distributed platform of exchange.
The digital currency is generated – or "mined" – as an incentive when big computers solve a lot of tricky math to validate transactions on a meddle-proof register called the blockchain.
Bitcoin is no longer unrepentant for being the preferred currency to use to make untraceable payments on the dark web, the subterranean bowels of the internet that criminals exploit.
The portfolio has also been used for money laundering and extortion through ransomware attacks.
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