Bitcoin Hits $100,000 For The First Time
Hong Kong, China: Bitcoin broke the $100,000 mark on Thursday, boosted by the election of Donald Trump as US president, who leans very favorable to the cryptocurrency sector. This unprecedented and symbolic milestone for the digital currency star seemed totally unlikely 16 years ago, at the time of its creation. The figure lends a little more credibility to this controversial sector, which looks very favorably on the return of the Republican to the White House, especially with Elon Musk at his side. After calling cryptocurrencies a scam during his first term in office (2017-2021), Trump changed his tone during his campaign, which was partly funded by industry groups. Now he claims he will make the United States “the world capital of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.”
As a result, Bitcoin, which was worth just over $69,000 per unit on November 5, the day of the US election, reached $103,800.44 on Thursday, before settling at just under $103,000 in Asian trading. The stock has appreciated by around 50% since the tycoon’s victory and by more than 130% since the beginning of this year. The final push was Trump’s announcement on Wednesday of his planned appointment of cryptocurrency-friendly Republican lawyer Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the financial markets regulator known as the SEC.
Last year, Atkins publicly criticized SEC officials for not being more accommodating toward crypto companies and accused them of driving entrepreneurs away from the U.S. market. “Paul is a proven leader on common sense regulation. He recognizes that digital assets and other innovations are crucial to making America even greater than it has ever been,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. Atkins’ upcoming appointment “has fired up the crypto community, reinforcing investor optimism in a more accommodating regulatory landscape” and “a lenient approach to the booming digital asset market,” sums up Stephen Innes, an analyst at SPI Asset Management.
The recent resignation of the current SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, the sector’s bête noire, had already boosted the price of digital currencies. Furthermore, reports that Trump may create a cryptocurrency ministry or a strategic bitcoin reserve in the United States also fuel optimism. Many cryptocurrency-related companies saw their prices skyrocket after the US election, such as Bitcoin service provider MicroStrategy or exchange platform Coinbase. Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency originally created as a joke and promoted by Elon Musk since 2019, has also been on the rise. “Wow!” Musk posted on his X network after the news that Bitcoin had surpassed $100,000.
In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as one of its legal currencies, but the cryptocurrency has not convinced the population. Bitcoin was born in 2008 from the dream of escaping the control of financial institutions. To achieve this, its mysterious creator, known only by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, used a technology called ‘blockchain’ that records transactions in a decentralized and unforgeable way thanks to a network of computers spread across the world. Although the operation was a success, Bitcoin, like other cryptocurrencies, has been involved in numerous financial scandals. It is also accused of being used for money laundering and is the preferred currency of hackers.
