The late half of the year has been a major success for cryptocurrency heavyweight Bitcoin as it breaks above $41,522 (around R776,647).
It is the first time since April that the currency has hit such highs, according to market evaluations.
Currency analysts argue that the main reason for the growth in value by Bitcoin is the broad enthusiasm that the US will cut interest rates.
According to Reuters, stock market traders also believe that the US will approve of US stock market traded bitcoin funds.
Coindesk noted that Bitcoin and Ether added almost 4% to their value in the last 24 hours and this was mainly due to the optimism around a possible spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval in the US.
It should be noted that bitcoin has made 152% gains this year in value.
Justin d'Anethan, the head of business development for Keyrock said that, “a 50% rally since mid-October has seemed to mark a decisive shift away from the bearishness of 2022 and early 2023”.
He noted that institutional buying of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin in November illustrated a new level of interest.
At 10.30am the price of Bitcoin was trading at $41,709 (around R780,285) and Ethereum was trading at $42,163 (around R788,779).
The price of Ether was trading at $2,256 (around R42,197) on Monday morning.
Nigel Green, the CEO of the deVere Group said that Bitcoin’s price jump has been fuelled by scandal crackdowns and central bank expectations.
“Bitcoin topping $40,000 is because of, not despite the recent scandals are clearing out the bad actors from the market,” Green said on Monday.
He noted that last month, Changpeng Zhao (known as CZ),the founder of Binance, pleaded guilty to money laundering violations and agreed to pay a $50 million fine and step down from his role as the company’s CEO.
It should also be noted that Binance itself also pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines and restitution to the government.
“The CZ/Binance scandal and the FTX collapse which resulted in a month-long trial which convicted the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, triggered some short-term volatility, but the crypto market has continued to remain bullish,” Green concluded.
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