Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, continued gaining on Sunday, rising to a fresh high and extending a two-month rally that took its market capitalization above $1 trillion on Friday.
The leading cryptocurrency has been marking a steady stream of new highs for months, with yesterday’s rally being the highest ever to a record $58,354, taking its weekly gain to around 20%. Bitcoin has already surged around 100% this year.
The current ramp-up in the price of BTC was ignited earlier this month by Tesla, when the electric-automobile manufacturer said it had purchased $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency for its treasury. This sparked a round of playing “who’s next?” in terms of investing treasury funds in BTC and the resulting hype helped focus the attention of main street investors on the sector overall.
The rally was also fueled by major corporations indicating their interest in the blockchain innovation, with Mastercard and Visa indicating they will allow their vendors to accept payments in crypto currencies. Global fund managers such as Blackrock Inc, had said earlier in the year, they had allowed two of their funds to open positions in BTC.
The rally continued despite Tesla CEO Elon Musk saying through a tweet on Saturday that bitcoin prices “seem high” as a response to a following post to a user who said gold was better than both bitcoin and cash.
Motley Fool to Buy Bitcoin
In the latest entrant, popular American online financial advisory company, Motley Fool disclosed it was investing $5 million in the world’s most popular cryptocurrency in the coming weeks using the firm’s fund. Motley Fool further added that it was fully aware of the risk involved holding in the short term, due to its susceptibility to high volatility, as the American financial company planned to invest it in the long term.
The Bitcoin rally has also been fueled by BTC whales which have been moving large stacks of Bitcoins at record levels, amid high institutional demand for the world’s most popular crypto asset.
On Friday, Bill Gates, popular tech billionaire and founder of the world’s most valuable software maker, Microsoft, revealed he is open-minded towards the world’s most popular crypto asset but does support the digitalization of fiat currencies as it would drive down the operational costs of managing paper money. He also revealed he hasn’t bought any bitcoin.
The Bitcoin rally has also triggered a strong bullish momentum in major altcoins like Stellar, Ethereum, Cardano, and Polkadot.