Bitcoin surpasses $ 17,000 for the first time since December 2017

The largest digital currency, which more than doubled this year, rose 2.2% to $ 17,067 on Tuesday in New York trading. From an all-time high in December 2017 of nearly $ 20,000, Bitcoin has plummeted to $ 3,136 in one year.

View full image

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value has gone through a boom and recession and a second boom since its hectic heyday in 2017. Much has changed in the years since then, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts claim that digital coins have went through a process of maturation. But the craze surrounding digital currencies back then is largely absent, despite Bitcoin being around 14% lower than its vaunted high records.

“The charm that comes with it has vanished. You have the hardcore group “I’m a cryptocurrency investor,” but it hasn’t really expanded because it’s been so volatile, there have been so many questions about security and what the regulations might do, “said Kathy Jones, chief income strategist. fixed for Schwab Center for Financial Research. “The number of applications I get now is a fraction of what I got a couple of years ago when it was really hot.”

By all accounts, Bitcoin had a great year, despite a crash at the start of the coronavirus pandemic that saw it drop 25% in March. It has more than doubled since December, and many fans are once again looking to the $ 20,000 level as the next barrier to break.

Developments in recent months have helped fuel this year’s rally. Fidelity Investments launched a Bitcoin fund, adding its star power and legacy branding to the space. Some prominent Wall Street names have bought. Public companies Square Inc. and MicroStrategy Inc. recently invested in the coin. And one of the biggest events for fans was PayPal Holding Inc.’s October decision to allow customers to access cryptocurrencies.

But market watchers say more pressing issues have captured headlines this month.

“It’s a bit in the shadows right now,” said Bryce Doty, portfolio manager of Sit Fixed Income Advisors. “Bitcoin gets attention when it looks like the world is coming to an end, it’s the anti-vaccine trade. How stocks and everything else have done better and people have forgotten about trade wars and things have been eclipsed by the pandemic, Bitcoin took a back seat to all this.

Matt Maley of Miller Tabak + Co. says institutional investors may be paying more attention to the crypto space – he has received a few calls about it in recent weeks. But individual investors, many of whom suffered the 2018 Bitcoin crash, may have their eyes on other issues. This year has been torturous and many are concerned about the pandemic and economic recession, says the company’s chief market strategist.

“People – a lot of these people got badly burned – are less excited about this now,” he said. Highs of 2017 “.

Guy Hirsch, chief executive for the United States at multi-asset brokerage eToro, is tracking a slightly non-traditional sentiment indicator: the total number of Tweets mentioning Bitcoin on a daily basis. At the height of the cryptocurrency boom, he was seeing around 120,000 Bitcoin-related tweets per day. That number now fluctuates between 30,000 and 60,000, according to data from eToro and The Tie.

“This rally is clearly different in many ways,” Hirsch said over the phone. It’s less speculative, he said, and although recent developments have been advanced to “a snail movement, it’s in the right direction. In general, we’re very optimistic about what’s going on.”

Greg King, chief executive of Osprey Funds, a REX Shares subsidiary that runs a Bitcoin trust, says the enthusiasm is there “but I think it’s a more ingrained enthusiasm.” He added: “The longer Bitcoin persists and the more ramps it builds and the more interest increases, I think it’s becoming more and more real in the minds of investors – everyone has progressed three years further down the adoption curve.” .

King says he doesn’t get nearly as many requests from distant relatives about Bitcoin’s performance as he did a few years ago. But it solicits a prospect: Its price went from $ 1,000 in early 2017 to over $ 19,000 later that same year.