(Bloomberg) — Bitcoin climbed to a record high, extending a rally sparked by President-elect Donald Trump’s support for digital assets and his plan to turn the US into the dominant force in the sector.
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The largest token rose more than 3% at one point on Monday in Asia to an unprecedented $106,493, exceeding its previous peak from Dec. 5. The advance helped to boost sentiment in the wider crypto market.
Trump is moving toward creating a friendly regulatory backdrop for digital assets, undoing a crackdown imposed by President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration. The Republican has also backed the idea of a strategic national Bitcoin stockpile, though many question the feasibility of the proposal.
A lot of people are “basing their expectation on a much more favorable administration,” Aya Kantorovich, co-founder of institutional crypto platform August, said on Bloomberg Television. The optimism is reflected in demand for exchange-traded funds investing in digital assets, she added.
On Friday, Nasdaq Global Indexes said Bitcoin accumulator MicroStrategy Inc. will join the Nasdaq 100 Index. The software maker’s metamorphosis into a leveraged bet on Bitcoin has transfixed Wall Street. The company has been raising capital to plow billions of dollars into the digital asset.
“Now that MicroStrategy is in Nasdaq, index funds may buy its shares, and that will help the company to raise more equity to buy more Bitcoin,” said Sean McNulty, director of trading at liquidity provider Arbelos Markets.
The original cryptocurrency, which has more than doubled this year, changed hands at $105,400 as of 9:55 a.m. on Monday in Singapore. Smaller tokens such as second-ranked Ether and meme-crowd favorite Dogecoin rose too.
Bitcoin through Sunday cemented a seven-week winning streak, the longest such run since 2021. But the pace of gains cooled more recently, which could be an indication that “a pullback may be coming,” IG Australia Pty Market Analyst Tony Sycamore wrote in a note.
US ETFs investing directly in Bitcoin have attracted $12.2 billion of net inflows since Trump’s victory in the presidential election on Nov. 5. Subscriptions for similar products for Ether have reached $2.8 billion over the same period.
–With assistance from Adam Haigh.
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