Bitcoin hits new all-time high after trading above $19,700 for the first time since 2017

bitcoinREUTERS/Jim Urquhart

Summary List Placement
  • Bitcoin hit record highs on Monday, surging above $19,700 to smash its December 2017 peak.
  • The world's most popular cryptocurrency traded at $19,843 as of 10:21 a.m. ET, bringing the gain for the year to 186%.
  • "The Bitcoin correction didn't last long, with the cryptocurrency having sights set on new highs once again," a senior market analyst at OANDA said.
  • Rising inflation and increasingly negative views of modern monetary policy are forcing investors to look for alternative ways to preserve the value of their capital, the co-founder of Chainlink said.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Bitcoin set a new all-time high on Monday, trading above $19,700 for the first time in three years.

The digital token was trading up 8% at $19,843 as of 10:21 a.m. ET on Monday, exceeding a previous record of $19,783 set in December 2017. Only last week, the cryptocurrency crashed by $3,000 through Thanksgiving after large volume profit-taking dragged on prices.

"The Bitcoin correction didn't last long, with the cryptocurrency having sights set on new highs once again, with $20,000 the ultimate goal in the short-term," said Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst at OANDA. "A move into uncharted territory and the psychological boost that would come with a move like this could propel Bitcoin aggressively higher."

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Popular Bitcoin investor Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of crypto exchange Gemini, said the token's potential to unseat gold as an emergent store of value means its price could jump 25 times from $19,000. "No other liquid asset in the universe can credibly offer this magnitude of asymmetric payoff in the next decade," he tweeted.

Meanwhile, Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of Chainlink, expects the price to eventually break $100,000 because the "digital gold" narrative seems to have normalized.

According to him, two factors will drive its price over $100,000.

For one, rising inflation and increasingly negative views of modern monetary policy are already leading both individuals and institutions to look for alternative ways to preserve the value of their capital, Nazarov noted. Also, growing demand for yield and the rise of "Decentralized Finance" or "DeFi" — the fastest growing sector within the blockchain industry — is accelerating its growth. 

"Quite simply, the risk reward equation is starting to flip from traditional financial assets being yield bearing, less risky and reliable stores of wealth resistant to inflation, over to Bitcoin and various cryptoassets being the sources of yield, increasingly less risk and a reliable store of wealth," he said.

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