It’s no exaggeration to some that digital currencies could inherit the world.
Bitcoin has breached its $64,900 April ceiling, surging past $67,000 on Wednesday, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro. The world’s largest digital currency jumped by 3%, to an initial high of $67,00 at 10:10 AM EDT, outclassing the earlier mid-April record.
This comes on the heels of the cryptocurrency entering the New York Stock Exchange for the first time on Tuesday.
And it could be the beginning of a new world.Billionaire investor Paul Tudor said crypto had become his preferred hedge against inflation over gold, according to a CNBC report. “Bitcoin would be a great hedge. Crypto would be a great hedge,” said Jones in the report. “There’s a plan in place for crypto and clearly it’s winning the race against gold at the moment … I would think that would also be in very good inflation hedge. It would be my preferred one over gold at the moment.” Bitcoin continued to rise while Ethereum also saw a rise of more than 4%, breaking through its previous $4,000 level, to reach a new high of $4,005.91. Proshares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, which tracks contracts of bitcoin futures that speculate on the future price of cryptocurrency, rose by nearly 5% on its first day on the New York Stock Exchange this Tuesday.
However, not everyone involved in the crypto market is impressed. Several of them would prefer an ETF that tracks spot prices, instead of futures. The latter has forced less experienced investors into a crash course on stock market terms like “contango,” which refers to how a futures price of a commodity is higher than its spot price. Another term, “backwardation,” basically means the reverse.
“More products are great, but I just don’t see the point in investing in futures-based bitcoin ETFs when you can buy the asset in the spot market,” said Managing Director Jodie Gunzberg of CoinDesk Indexes, according to the CNBC report. “It’s not like oil or cattle that is impossible to hold physically for most investors. It’s more like gold that can be easily held. Except the cost is more like oil.”
Meanwhile, on social media, some of the most famous names in Bitcoin were toasting to the rise. “The halls of eternity echo with the cries of those who sold their Bitcoin,” said CEO Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy, in a tweet. As of writing, expectations are generally high for the cryptocurrency to soar to even higher highs in the coming weeks and months, according to a Cointelegraph report. Some estimates project short-term gains of up to $300,000 per Bitcoin. That’s a lot of money, but despite the potentially risk-prone nature of the cryptocurrency, in addition to the new ETF, there’s no avoiding it: Bitcoin, it seems, is here to stay.
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