The price of Bitcoin went past $34,000 early Sunday morning, continuing a record-breaking holiday run and adding a big bright exclamation mark at the Bitcoin Network’s recent 12-year anniversary.
BTC has been trading for around $34,400 at 02:45 EST Sunday. Just hours prior, the leading cryptocurrency had sliced past $30,000 like an axe, starting the new year with a blow.
Driving the record-breaking rally is an apparent growing narrative that Bitcoin constitutes a form of “digital gold,” that comes with a wave of institutional investors into the cryptocurrency. These include Anthony Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital (with $182 million investment in the last month of 2020); MassMutual (over $100 million in a month); and Guggenheim (investing up to 10% of the company $5 billion worth macro-fund).
“The BTC rate is being boosted by institutional investment and there are not enough coins in supply,” said Laurent Kssis, manager at 21Shares. “The amount of family offices wanting to invest in our ETP is just mind-blowing. I have never seen such a thing before. Back in 2017, it was mostly retail coming to us, now it’s predominantly institutional.”
Kssis’ statements are provoked by the fact that the number of whale players – clusters of cryptocurrency addresses being held by a single market participant storing at least 1,000 Bitcoin – has risen to a new all-time high of 1,995 this past Wednesday.
