A record per hour: Bitcoin sets series of new all-time highs, steady on its way to $35,000

Bitcoin has made a quick start to the year, following a record-setting 2020. The world’s premier cryptocurrency has crossed the $34,000 mark for the first time ever after breaking its own records twice in less than 24 hours.

The price of bitcoin has surged another 13 percent to hit a new all-time high of $34,000 with the daily trading volumes crossing a record $75 billion.

Bitcoin was trading at $34,789 at 7:49am GMT, according to CoinMarketCap. Its market capitalization is reportedly hovering around $640 billion.

In December, Bitcoin advanced almost 50 percent, when it breached $20,000. It nearly tripled in value during 2020 after investors turned to crypto markets amid a weakening dollar. Moreover, the US Federal Reserve is planning to leave interest rates near zero for several years, forcing cash inflows into the world’s number one digital asset.

This isn’t bitcoin’s first price spike. The token had a strong run in 2017 and hit a then-record high of more than $20,000. However, its price plummeted by about 80 percent to just over $3,000 by early 2019 on the news that Chinese authorities continued their crackdown on cryptocurrency businesses.

Bitcoin was launched in 2009 and was the first cryptocurrency to use a decentralized blockchain-based network, enabling secure peer-to-peer transactions. Back then, the world-leading asset was worth less than a dollar per token.

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