The price of bitcoin crossed the $ 50,000 threshold on Tuesday February 16, 2021, a first for cryptocurrency who keeps breaking records, galvanized by the interest of big banks and companies like Tesla.
At around 1:35 p.m., bitcoin rose to $ 50,547.70, an all-time high.
It then fell back to cost around 13:55 GMT 49,505.35 dollars, up 2.7% on the session and more than 70% since the start of the year.
The value of bitcoin has quintupled in one year
After a dizzying performance in 2020, bitcoin has seen its value quintuple in the past year.
But if some market observers are wary of the volatility of this decentralized market which does not rely on any assets, others believe that the situation is very different from 2017, when prices climbed with the same enthusiasm before crashing. early 2018.
“A growing interest in the business world in cryptocurrencies has transformed the market compared to 2017”, comments Neil Wilson, analyst at Markets.com.
Last week, electric automaker Tesla surprised by announcing that it had invested $ 1.5 billion of its cash in bitcoin.
The boss of Tesla and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, does not hesitate to praise the merits of cryptocurrencies on social networks.
Traditional banking groups are interested in bitcoin now
On Tuesday, the MicroStrategy group, a mid-sized American software publisher that made the bet at the end of 2020 to invest heavily in bitcoin, to allow Wall Street investors to bet on cryptocurrency by buying their stock, announced a lifting in funds of $ 600 million “To buy bitcoins”.
In addition, banking and financial groups are increasingly interested in bitcoin: the oldest bank on Wall Street BNY Mellon and MasterCard took over last week from the giant BlackRock or the payment service Paypal, which all announced new cryptocurrency projects in recent months.
However, the cryptocurrency market is not unanimous: several central bankers, such as Andrew Bailey in the United Kingdom, have dismissed the idea of considering bitcoin as a currency in its own right, or even as a “Digital gold” which would serve to conserve wealth.
– .
