Bitcoin’s price broke above $50,000 for the first time in history on Tuesday, continuing its impressive rally as major companies appear to be warming up to cryptocurrencies.
The world’s largest digital currency by market value rose more than 3% to an all-time high of $50,487 at about 7:30 a.m. ET, according to data from Coin Metrics. It later fell below the mark, trading 0.2% higher at a price of $48,760.
Companies that have driven Bitcoin’s price
The price of the cryptocurrency has been driven up mainly by companies like Tesla which announced earlier this month that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency in January and that it intended to start accepting the coin as payment.
Mastercard the credit-card giant company also said it will open up its network to some digital currencies, and give its vendors the option to receive payments in cryptocurrencies later in the year.
PayPal and BNY Mellon have also made big moves to support the digital currency by accepting it as a mode of exchange.
Additionally, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive, recently said he and the rapper Jay-Z would buy 500 bitcoins worth $23 million to start an endowment fund to support tech related development in India and Africa.
Morgan Stanley, one of the world’s largest fund managers, said its $150 billion investment fund was looking closely at a large purchase of bitcoins and will soon announce investments amidst worries of the market’s volatility.
SynBiotic SE also became the first public-listed firm in Germany to shift part of its free liquidity in the cryptocurrency. The announcement came on Tuesday, with the firm saying there decision focused on the risk of devaluation of the euro and dollar and less on price fluctuations.
For this reason, they had more long-term confidence in bitcoin than in euros or dollars.
Canada accepts the Second Bitcoin ETF
Evolve’s bitcoin is the second exchange-traded fund (ETF) that was approved by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC). The ETF was conditionally approved on Tuesday to trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the company announced in a press release.
The approval follows the Ontario Securities Commission approval of Purpose Investment’s bitcoin ETF on Thursday.
ETFs are an easy way for investors who want to get exposure to the digital currency without having to hold the asset itself and without having to deal with the premiums investors normally trade.
