Bitcoin price rises above $84,000 as investors bet incoming US government will implement crypto-friendly policies
The price of Bitcoin rose above $84,000 (£65,263) on Monday as cryptocurry investors betted that Donald Trump would institute crypto-friendly policies after taking office in January.
Bitcoin has more than doubled in price from about $37,000 a year ago.
Trump previously criticised cryptocurrencies, but he spoke more positively about them during his election campaign, including a speech in July in which he suggested creating a “strategic national Bitcoin stockpile”.
He promised to make the US “the crypto capital of the planet”, without specifying any policies.
Deregulation
The president-elect has promised to fire Gary Gensler, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Since his appointment by Joe Biden in 2021, Gensler has led a drive to more closely regulate crypto firms under existing securities regulations.
The SEC’s drive has seen a crackdown on companies such as Coinbase and Binance, whose chief executive served three months in prison this summer for the company’s failure to enforce money-laundering regulations.
Coinbase’s stock price is up about 76 percent over the past five days, including a sharp rise of more than 20 percent on Monday.
Microstrategy, a software company whose founder led huge purchases of Bitcoin, was up 18 percent in early trading on Monday.
Other stocks have risen over the past few days on optimism that Trump would cut business taxes and relax regulations, with Nvidia’s market capitalisation surging above $3.6tn before dropping to $3.56tn on Monday.
Market rally
Last week Nvidia surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable listed company.
Tesla’s shares have risen nearly 40 percent over the past five days, and rose a further 7 percent in early Monday trading on optimism that deregulation would aid the company’s rollout of autonomous driving products.
The company rejoined the select club of companies worth more than $1tn after first crossing the $1tn mark in October 2021 amidst a pandemic-era rally in the tech sector.
Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook owner Meta Platforms are also worth more than $1tn, with all of those except Meta worth more than $2tn.