Bitcoin price surged above $15,000 on Thursday, reaching levels not seen since January 2018 amid uncertainty surrounding the US presidential election. The world’s most famous cryptocurrency last traded almost 9% higher at $15,233.
Bitcoin collapsed in 2020 and has more than doubled its value so far. Its meteoric rise was due to unprecedented stimulus from global governments and central banks during the coronavirus pandemic, which industry insiders say makes virtual currencies more attractive than fiat currencies like the dollar.
A Growing Interest
In essence, Bitcoin is a much more vital commodity today than it was three years ago due to several factors. They include halving institutional growth, real-world cases, US publicly traded companies moving 10% of their balances, and payment giants like PayPal, accept crypto.
MicroStrategy and Square are excited about the news and got more than a 32% return on their massive investment earlier this year.
MicroStrategy has invested $425 million in Bitcoin, split into two significant purchases in August and September this year. It supports an average purchase price of $ 11,111. Bitcoin’s price increase resulted in a net profit of $133 million for MicroStrategy, with the current total value of bitcoins being $558 million. Michael Sailor, CEO of MicroStrategy, said Bitcoin is digital gold and plans to continue investing in the long term.
Square followed their leader with a $50 million investment in October. Since then, the company has made an $18 million profit on its investment, with its total BTC value of $68 million.
Amrita Ahuja, CFO of Square, expressed her belief that Bitcoin can become a more ubiquitous currency in the future.
In October, payments giant PayPal jumped -8.9% into the bitcoin and cryptocurrency space and announced that it would soon offer to buy and spend bitcoin services. The news rocked the waves in the financial world as the handover of PayPal to Bitcoin was seen as a sign that broader adoption was in the works.
More Buyers Push the Massive Bitcoin Rally
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency traders point out that Wall Street’s perceptions and the coin’s growing reputation as an inflation hedge contributed more to its recent rally than the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) that swept the world in 2017.
Alex Krueger, a crypto economist, said that he thinks the retail frenzy reflected in the Google Trends data is coming at some point. What is currently going on in trading can be termed as divergence. “We usually expect the price to be close to the core data, but this is too simple and ignores that there are other factors driving this Bitcoin move.”
Krueger sees institutional and personal interests in asset management and corporate interests as the driving force behind Bitcoin’s recent spike – as opposed to the retail frenzy that pushed Bitcoin to a staggering $20,000 peak at the end of the year 2017.
