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Bitcoin has surged above $100,000 for the first time, extending a dramatic rally as investors bet on greater political and regulatory support from US president-elect Donald Trump.
The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency climbed as much as 6.1 per cent on Thursday to $103,800, up more than 50 per cent since Trump’s November election victory.
On Wednesday, the former president nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, the main market regulator, raising hopes for a more favourable regulatory climate for the industry.
Trump, who has vowed to make the US “the bitcoin superpower of the world”, has nominated several crypto enthusiasts to top roles, including Howard Lutnick to run the commerce department and Elon Musk to co-head a cost-saving effort dubbed the “department of government efficiency”. The acronym Doge is a nod to the crypto token dogecoin, which Musk has touted online and has soared nearly 150 per cent since election day.
The nomination of Atkins added further impetus to a rally sparked by the launch of the first stock market funds investing in bitcoin in January.
“Bitcoin reaching $100k is an incredible milestone for our movement,” Kris Marszalek, chief executive of exchange Crypto.com wrote on X. “We never doubted. We never wavered. And we will never stop building.”
The cryptocurrency’s rise past $100,000 marks a dramatic change in fortune for the sector from two years ago, when the collapse of FTX in late 2022 spurred a crisis in the market and sent the price of bitcoin plummeting to $16,000.
Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, was fined $4.3bn last year for failing to prevent money laundering, while FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried was jailed for 25 years in March for defrauding customers.
Under its current chair, Gary Gensler, the SEC launched a series of lawsuits against many of crypto’s biggest names including exchanges Coinbase, Kraken and Crypto.com, payments provider Ripple and blockchain software company Consensys.
Under Gensler’s leadership, 18 per cent of the SEC’s tips, complaints and referrals were crypto-related, “despite the crypto markets comprising less than 1 per cent” of US capital markets, the agency said in its statement announcing his departure in November.
Crypto executives and traders now predict a “golden era” for the industry during the Trump administration, betting that favourable new regulations will unleash a flood of money from big asset managers into the sector.
“Interest in [crypto] is pretty much unstoppable,” said Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered.
Bitcoin’s rally has also been fuelled by a flood of institutional money. Exchange traded funds investing in the cryptocurrency run by mainstream asset managers including BlackRock and Fidelity have pulled in billions since they received regulatory approval in January.
The inflows have accelerated since Trump’s sweeping victory, with $4.4bn pouring in since the start of November. BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF now has $45bn in assets.
MicroStrategy, the software group turned bitcoin investor led by Michael Saylor, has also piled into the rally. It plans to raise $42bn in share sales in the coming years for bitcoin purchases. It has already raised more than $7bn since the election from share and bond sales.
Trump’s change of tack on crypto, which he had previously criticised as a “scam”, came as he raked in millions of dollars of campaign financing from big crypto investors.
“This bitcoin bull run is different,” said Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of crypto exchange Gemini. “We have . . . a pro-tech president-elect, a red Senate, a red House, and [a] popular vote mandate from the country to build.”
Additional reporting by William Sandlund
