Cloud Hosting

Bitcoin surged on Monday to set its first fresh record in nearly three years, driven by a wave of new investors lured by the potential for big profits.

The digital currency rose as high as $19,834.93, according to CoinDesk, topping the previous intraday record of $19,783.21 set Dec. 18, 2017. Bitcoin has nearly tripled in 2020 and is up more than 90% since early September. It closed Monday at $19376.18, up 6.1%. The surge comes amid a wider rally across markets. The Federal Reserve and other central banks have injected trillions worth of liquidity into the capital markets, and a number of companies working on coronavirus vaccines are providing hope that the global pandemic will soon be brought under control.

With safe assets like government bonds yielding close to zero, investors have been more willing to place bets on risky assets in hopes of reaping big gains, and bitcoin is among the riskiest assets in the capital markets. You have the weakened dollar, enormous growth of central bank balance sheets and questions about whether it will or wont cause inflation, said Socit Gnrale forex strategist Kit Juckes. Its another beneficiary of the collapse in real yields.

Trading volume for bitcoin has surged in the past few months, to $50 billion a day from around $18 billion a day in September, according to data from research site Coingecko. Other cryptocurrencies have benefited from the interest as well. Ether is up 370% this year. XRP is up more than 234%.

Bitcoins gains have been fueled by both retail and professional investors, and a plethora of platforms that make it easy to trade cryptocurrencies.

See more here:
Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High Above $19,000, Topping 2017 Record - The Wall Street Journal