Bitcoin hit $18,488 during early hours trading this morning before pulling back slightly. The cryptoasset is now trading around $17,800 at the time of writing. It last reached such lofty levels in December 2017.
Bitcoin’s market cap has also hit an all-time high of over $330 billion – higher than the previous record of $329.3 billion set on 16 December 2017, according to CoinGecko.
Bitcoin’s market cap is now higher despite the cryptoasset being worth slightly less because there are more bitcoins in the system than there were in 2017. The supply has expanded by roughly 10.75% since its last record.
Wealthy investors are buying more Bitcoin
Nearly three-quarters of high net worth individuals will be invested in cryptocurrencies before the end of 2022, according to a new global poll. The survey, carried out by deVere Group, one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisations, discovered that 73% of poll participants are now already invested in or will make investments in digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP, before the end of 2022.
Of the survey, deVere Group CEO and founder, Nigel Green, who launched the pioneering deVere Crypto app in 2018, said:
“The price of Bitcoin is up 125% year-to-date, making it once again one of the best-performing assets of the year. As the survey shows, this impressive performance is drawing the attention of wealthy investors who increasingly understand that digital currencies are the future of money and they don’t want to be left in the past.”
DeVere said the same poll undertaken last year found that 68% of high net worth individuals are now already invested in or will make investments in digital currencies before the end of 2022, meaning there has been a jump of 5% year-on-year.
Growing interest in Bitcoin from Wall Street
It is possible that many of these HNWs who were polled have seen that a major driver of the price surge is the growing interest being expressed by institutional investors who are capitalising on the high returns that the digital asset class is currently offering. They – including some of the biggest Wall Street banks amongst others – are now aware that the world’s biggest and most influential decentralised currency isn’t going anywhere.
This will mean that they are set to bring even more of their knowledge and capital into the already booming sector – and this is unlikely to have been overlooked by wealthy retail investors. Nor too will the recent decision by one of the biggest payment companies in the world, PayPal, to allow customers to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin, have gone unnoticed.
Bitcoin a hedge against long term inflation worries?
The deVere CEO says that investors are being attracted to bullish Bitcoin as it is a “legitimate hedge against longer-term inflation concerns which have come to the fore due to stimulus packages” – more of which are promised by major governments and central banks around the world.
These emergency measures, like the massive money-printing agenda, reduce the value of traditional currencies like the dollar.
Other inherent characteristics of cryptocurrencies are piquing interest too. These include the fact that they’re borderless, making them perfectly suited to an ever globalised world of commerce, trade, and people; that they are digital, making them perfectly suited for the increasing digitalization of our world; and that demographics are on the side of cryptocurrencies as younger people are more likely to embrace them than older generations.
