Bitcoin on record run, crosses $18,000 mark: Can it cross the 20k mark?

The last time bitcoin went to an upward tragedy, the entire world was talking about. It’s 2020 and things are strange. Almost no one is paying attention and the currency is on a record run again.

The original and biggest cryptocurrency jumped as high as $18,483 and was last up 2%. Source - Reuters.

The last time bitcoin went to an upward tragedy, the entire world was talking about. It’s 2020 and things are strange. Almost no one is paying attention and the currency is on a record run again. Bitcoin broke through $18,000 on Wednesday to hit its highest since December 2017 extending its blistering 2020 rally driven by demand for its perceived quality as an inflation hedge and expectations of mainstream acceptance.

The original and biggest cryptocurrency jumped as high as $18,483 and was last up 2%. It has soared about 160% this year and has jumped 17% in the last three days alone. Bitcoin is now close to its all-time high of just under $20,000, which it touched at the peak of its retail investor-fuelled 2017 bubble.

"It is not out of the question for the crypto to hit its all-time high of $20,000 this side of Christmas," said Simon Peters, an analyst at investment platform eToro. "The crypto industry has consolidated, matured and is seeing real traction with institutional investors. Investors are using bitcoin as an inflationary hedge to combat the prospect of continued government stimulus."

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Vikram Subburaj, Co-founder & CEO of Giottus Cryptocurrency Exchange believes that the latest surge is different from what we saw in 2017. He explained that the recent price increase is majorly driven by the entry of Institutional players and not retail FOMO looking for a short-term gain.

“The value of the Global Negative-Yielding Debt Index from Bloomberg and Barclays is now at a record level of $17.05 trillion. Never in history had so much money being printed pushing inflation higher while the bond yields are negative. For the first time ever Germany's government has sold their 30-year bond for a negative yield and the rest of the developed nations like that of US are struggling to avoid negative yields. So large companies who are holding their reserves in cash are losing the value of their assets and are looking for alternative assets like Bitcoin,” he said.

Vikram added that institutions entering Crypto was a long-awaited event and the 2017 price increase was expecting this to happen then. But 2020 has been the year we are seeing many of these institutions entering this space to hedge against traditional investments.

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