The bitcoin exceeds 50 000 dollars and interests Wall Street
The price of bitcoin soared to more than $50,000 on Tuesday, galvanized by interest from major banks, companies like Tesla and investors with a whetted appetite for risk. Around 12:35 GMT (1:35 p.m. in Paris), bitcoin rose to $50,547.70, an all-time high. It then retreated to cost around 13:35 GMT 49,130.50 dollars, up 1.9% on the session and nearly 70% since the beginning of the year.
After a dizzying performance in 2020, bitcoin has seen its value increase fivefold in the last year. With more than 18.6 million bitcoins issued since its creation by anonymous individuals in 2008, the entire market is theoretically worth more than $923 billion.
While some market watchers are wary of the volatility of this decentralized, asset-free market, others say it's a far cry from 2017, when prices climbed with even more gusto before crashing in early 2018.
"A growing interest in cryptocurrencies from the corporate world has transformed the market from 2017," comments Neil Wilson, an analyst at Markets.com. Last week, electric carmaker Tesla created a surprise by announcing it had invested $1.5 billion of its cash in bitcoin. Tesla's boss and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, is not shy about touting cryptocurrencies on social media.
On Tuesday, MicroStrategy Group, a mid-sized U.S. software company that made a bet in late 2020 to invest heavily in bitcoin, to allow Wall Street investors to bet on the cryptocurrency by buying their stock, announced a fundraising of $ 600 million "to buy bitcoins." In addition, banking and financial groups are increasingly interested in bitcoin: the oldest bank on Wall Street BNY Mellon and MasterCard have followed the example last week of the giant BlackRock or the payment service Paypal, which have announced new projects on cryptocurrencies in recent months.
"The approval of an exchange-traded bitcoin index fund in Canada is fueling hopes," adds Timo Emden, a Germany-based cryptocurrency analyst, who believes that if a similar financial product is approved in the United States, it would be evidence of a full "democratization" of cryptomarketing.
The crypto-currency market is not unanimous, however: several central bankers have dismissed the idea of considering bitcoin as a full-fledged currency.
Central banks - crypto
"I don't think digital currencies as they were originally conceived" meet the criteria "for the governance of a sustainable digital currency," Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said in late January.
Yet central banks' monetary policy is benefiting cryptocurrencies. In an attempt to prevent the economic train wreck promised by the Covid-19 pandemic, institutions have adopted very low or negative rates and are flooding the market with liquidity, driving investors to the riskiest assets.
And for some, since bitcoin depends on a decentralized network and can never be influenced by monetary policy in the same way as the euro or the dollar, it is the perfect investment to hedge against inflation. For others, buying bitcoin simply represents "a fear of missing the train," said Naeem Aslam, an analyst at Ava Trade.
