Bitcoin reached new all-time highs and in doing so pushed its market capitalization above the trillion dollars.
What triggered the bull run
The digital currency rally we are witnessing appears to have been triggered by an unprecedented wave of requests from institutions and billionaires, with the trend set after the largest publicly traded business intelligence firm, MicroStrategy, revealed that he converted $ 250 million of his treasury into BTC on 11 August.
At the end of January of this year, MicroStrategy had invested $ 1,095 billion for buy Bitcoins (71.079 BTC or 0,38% of Bitcoin's circulating supply). In early February, the company hosted a free webinar providing strategies for incorporating Bitcoin into corporate treasury reserves, and MicroStrategy is currently in the process of raising another $ 900 million to buy more BTC.
Institutional wealth manager, Grayscale, aggressively increased Bitcoin accumulation during 2020, with its Bitcoin Trust reporting an 872% increase in assets under management from $ 1,8 billion at the start. of the year at $ 17,5 billion in early January.
On February 8, news that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had invested $ 1,5 billion or 7,7% of the electric vehicle maker's treasury in BTC sent the price of the digital currency to new all-time highs. over $ 43.000.
And bullish institutional news continues to come in, with rumors suggesting Twitter could become the next big company to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet and mega banks like BNY Mellon and Deutsche Bank announcing moves to introduce BTC custody services. Major funds like BlackRock and Morgan Stanley are considering whether a Bitcoin investment is justified.
Bitcoin's 2020
BTC capitalization has increased more than 10 times since "Black Thursday" in March 2020. Amid the growing threat of the coronavirus pandemic, former US President Donald Trump has introduced a travel ban from Europe to United States on March 11, with many nations around the world going into total lockdown.
The increased panic has wreaked havoc in cryptocurrencies and financial markets as the price of Bitcoin plummeted more than 50% on March 11 to less than $ 4.000, triggering wholesale liquidations through leveraged exchanges. As of March 13, Bitcoin's market cap was under $ 100 billion.
Despite the carnage, opportunistic buyers consistently pushed prices higher as they hoarded BTC in anticipation of Bitcoin's third block reward halving in May 2020. BTC briefly recovered in May after it was revealed that the famous billionaire manager hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones wanted to hedge against inflation.
In contrast, it took Microsoft 45 years for its capitalization to exceed $ 27 trillion. It took Amazon 1 years and Google hit the $ 22 trillion milestone in just XNUMX years. The question is, how long will it take for Bitcoin to get close to gold's market cap?
