Bitcoin on the cusp of $100,000 breakthrough in historic week

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Happy Friday! Ed here.It’s no longer a pie-in-the-sky forecast — it’s reality.

On Friday, the price of Bitcoin stood on the cusp of hitting $100,000.

For years, bulls such as Arthur Hayes had unabashedly predicted Bitcoin would cross the six-digit threshold even as sceptics scoffed at the idea, especially after FTX went belly up in late 2022 and poleaxed credibility in crypto.

The sceptics were wrong.

Emboldened by Wall Street’s embrace of Bitcoin as a bona fide asset, as well as the election of pro-crypto Donald Trump, investors piled into the market, driving up the value of the coin almost 140% since November 5.

Just this week, Bitcoin surged more than 10%.

Solana pumps

It had plenty of company.

Solana, the archrival to Ethereum, chalked up a whopping 21% surge in the last seven days to hit a record high on Friday morning, trouncing the latter’s 8% performance.

As Pedro Solimano, our markets correspondent, reported, the blockchain is benefitting from being the top choice by a number of projects, including memecoins.

This week Bitwise, the crypto investment platform, said it would be the latest player to offer a Solana exchange-traded fund. (A SOL fund has yet to be green-lit by regulators.)

Getting back to memecoins…

Memecoins on the march

Osato Avan-Nomayo, our Nigeria correspondent, reported on how the 130% rise of the group since November 5 is fomenting talk of a “memecoin supercycle.”The memecoin market is so hot, DWF Labs, a crypto trading firm, launched a $20 million fund to invest in the space, reported Aleks Gilbert, our New York DeFi correspondent.

As for where Bitcoin goes next, DL News reported on a raft of bullish signals.

BlackRock, which manages the top Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, introduced options on the product. Straight away, the offering, which lets investors bet on a set future price of the asset, drew almost $445 million in inflows.

Then Gary Gensler, the hard-charging chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, said he would resign upon Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

Runaway market

As Pedro Solimano reported, MicroStrategy also continued its hefty purchases of Bitcoin for its treasury.

Led by Bitcoin champion Michael Saylor, the business intelligence software maker said this week it had acquired 51,780 Bitcoins, for $4.6 billion.

Things were getting so giddy in the market that shares in Bluesky Digital, a listed Canadian blockchain firm, suddenly rocketed more than 1,700% this week.

Why? A number of investors mistakenly thought the company was Bluesky, a social media platform that is emerging as an alternative to Elon Musk’s X.

A market this frothy can’t last, of course. But for now, crypto investors are revelling. The dark days of the crypto winter in 2022 and 2023 seem like a long time ago.

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Post of the week

Gary Gensler, the chair of US Securities and Exchange Commission, made it official with this post on X: He’s quitting. The sound you hear is a lot of crypto folk applauding.