Bitcoin Marks New All-Time High Price Above $108K as XRP Jumps

2024-12-19 11:02:29 Primitive Reading

From decrypt by Mat Di Salvo

Bitcoin broke a new all-time high on Tuesday morning New York time, smashing past $108,000 per coin before dropping sharply.

The biggest coin is now trading for $107,020, CoinGecko data shows. Over the past day, it's only up 0.3%—but over a seven-day period, it's up nearly 12%. The coin's new record price is $108,135.

Investors are more interested in Bitcoin than before following President-elect Donald Trump's shock victory on November 5. The Republican promised during his campaign to help the digital asset industry, even at one point telling people at a conference to "never sell your Bitcoin."

All eyes are now focused on whether the new administration will launch a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Such a plan would mean the U.S. government would hold a stockpile of the cryptocurrency as it already does with other assets, like gold.

Bitcoin has pushed to new all-time high marks for three straight days. The leading cryptocurrency first topped the $100,000 milestone mark earlier in December.

Money has flooded back into digital asset investment products—particularly the new Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. On Monday alone, investors threw more than $600 million at the 10 spot U.S. funds, which trade on stock exchanges.

Last week, investors continued to break records with the amount of money bet on cryptocurrencies via more traditional investment vehicles.

In the world of altcoins, XRP—a coin launched by the co-founders of fintech Ripple Labs—is making big gains.

The asset, the third-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, surged amid the launch of Ripple's dollar-pegged RLUSD stablecoin Tuesday, and is now trading for $2.63. Over the last day, XRP has jumped by more than 6%.

Among other high-value coins, Stellar (XLM) is the next-biggest gainer, having jumped in price by approximately 5% in the past day. The asset—whose native blockchain works to send money across borders, just like XRP—is now priced at nearly $0.44.

Both assets are still trading significantly lower than records they set back in 2018, however. XRP jumped to a seven-year high of $2.82 earlier this month, and rose back above $2.70 earlier Tuesday.

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