Bitcoin price, which has risen by more than 150% since the beginning of the year, surges above $42,000

A weekend rally has made the price of bitcoin surge above $42,000 for the first time in 19 months, as frenzied speculation in the digital asset’s market continues to help the prices of cryptocurrencies climb by more than 150 percent this year.

On Monday, Dec. 4, bitcoin rose by as much as 6.1 percent to a high of $42,144. By 4 p.m., it was trading at $41,803.

The value of bitcoin has climbed by more than 20 percent in just one month, and traders said the momentum behind buying bitcoin is still going strong.

Crypto executives are claiming that the recent rise in the value of bitcoin signals an ongoing bull run, with a growing number of voices suggesting that the price of bitcoin could surge to above $100,000 in 2024.

“It feels that [2023] was a year to get ready for the bull run that is yet to come,” noted Pascal Gauthier, CEO of digital asset security company Ledger. “But the sentiment is very hopeful for [2024] and 25.”

Cryptocurrency financial services firm Matrixport released a note to investors in the first week of December projecting that bitcoin’s value could go as high as $63,140 by April 2024 and $125,000 by the end of next year.

At the beginning of 2023, a single bitcoin cost less than $17,000 and the crypto asset’s financial situation was coming off of losing more than 75 percent of its value in a little over a year. Bitcoin had hit its high-water mark in November 2021, when its price stood at $68,000.

Since the start of the year, investors began slowly returning to bitcoin. Earlier this year, the collapse of prominent tech-focused banks led even more investors to turn to crypto.

Legal troubles facing bitcoin may be over – for now

Traders are suggesting that interest in purchasing bitcoin is now rapidly growing as investors see the end of two high-profile criminal cases that had hung over the crypto market for the past year as a sign that the volatility that has affected crypto assets may have finally abated for now. (Related: Binance cryptocurrency exchange pleads guilty to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws.)

Now that these legal issues are out of the way, investors are focused on purchasing cryptocurrency assets like bitcoin and on seeing what positive developments are being made in the industry.

“I think that once you get the speculative phase out of the way, which I think we’re almost done with – probably not yet completely done – then you can get real builders focusing on the technology and the problems that can solve in the world, rather than just having a giant digital casino for people to trade,” said David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark, a startup payment platform.

Other developments include growing excitement around a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, or ETF, which the federal government might approve soon and could bring in larger traditional investors who previously did not want their money going anywhere near crypto.

“I think what the ETF means really is that bitcoin is going mainstream, and that’s what people were waiting for,” said Gauthier.

Investors are also excited by the bitcoin halving, which takes place every four years and is scheduled for May 2024. This is when bitcoin miners see the rewards for their work cut in half. This keeps a cap on the supply of bitcoin – of which there will ever only be 21 million coins – and this enforced scarcity can increase the asset’s value.

“A number of market participants are expecting a bull run sometime after the halving, but given the ETF news, we could very well have a run before that, leaving most investors on the sidelines,” noted Vijay Ayyar, vice president of international markets at the crypto exchange CoinDCX. “That could cause a massive upward run in the price.”

Watch this video of financial expert Gregory Mannarino discussing important updates in the market, including the sudden surge in the value of bitcoin.

This video is from the channel What Is Happening on Brighteon.com.

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Sources include:

Bloomberg.com

APNews.com

FT.com

CNBC.com

Brighteon.com