On Tuesday, the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), touched the USD 17,000 mark for the first time since January 2018. However, other major coins from the top 10 outperformed BTC today.
At pixel time (12:07 PM UTC), BTC is slightly below the USD 17,000 level and is trading at USD 16,992. The price is up by 4% in a day and 11% in a week. It also rallied by 47% in a month and 96% in a week.
It took a week for BTC to increase from USD 15,000 to USD 16,000 and five days to reach USD 17,000.
And while BTC outperformed ethereum (ETH) today (+3%, USD 468), coins such as XRP, litecoin (LTC), ralied by 10%, polkadot (DOT) and cardano (ADA) - more than 8%.
"We are currently witnessing extremely bullish price action in BTC. Driven by a mix of market structure and strong fundamentals, BTC could now be within days of reaching it’s all-time high [of USD 20,000]," Nicholas Pelecanos, Head of Trading at NEM (XEM), said in an emailed comment.
According to him, underlying this bullish price action is the inflation hedge narrative "that has captured Wall Street since the immense money printing campaigns undertaken by the [Federal Reserve] earlier this year."
"In the US, we are even seeing current or former government officials who are beginning to invest in bitcoin. SkyBridge Capital, an investment firm founded by former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, has indicated in a pair of filings that the fund may hold long and short positions in digital assets. US Senator-elect Cynthia Lummis has recently announced that she hopes to bring Bitcoin into the national conversation and that it should be viewed as a store of value to counter inflation of US dollars," according to Kadan Stadelmann, Chief Technology Officer at Komodo (KMD).
Also, as reported, Tom Fitzpatrick, Managing Director at Citibank, said last week that "Bitcoin is the new Gold" that could hit USD 318,000 by December 2021.
"Improbable though that seems it would only be a low to high rally of 102 times (the weakest rally so far in percentage terms) at a point where the arguments in favour of Bitcoin could well be at their most persuasive ever," he said.
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(This article is being constantly updated with new details and comments)
