Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via Email background of headerforeground of header Watch Daily: Monday - Friday, 3 PM ET Crypto World Bitcoin tops $100,000 as monster 2024 rally reaches new heights Published Wed, Dec 4 20249:45 PM ESTUpdated 6 Min Ago Tanaya Macheel @tanayamacheel WATCH LIVE In this article BTC.CM= +7,672.76 (+8.03%) Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT A neon sign indicates that Bitcoin is accepted inside the venue of the Paralelni Polis project, an organization combining art, social sciences and modern technology, in Prague, Czech Republic, on Friday, Jan. 5, 2024. Bitcoin has been on a tear ahead of an upcoming Jan. 10 deadline that could see the US Securities and Exchange Commission approve the first exchange-traded fund tied directly to the asset's spot price. Photographer: Milan Jaros/Bloomberg via Getty Images A neon sign indicates that Bitcoin is accepted inside the venue of the Paralelni Polis project, an organization combining art, social sciences and modern technology, in Prague, Czech Republic, on Friday, Jan. 5, 2024. Milan Jaros | Bloomberg | Getty Images The price of bitcoin soared past the long-awaited $100,000 benchmark for the first time ever late Wednesday evening. The flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by more than 7% at $102,874.00, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as high as $103,844.05. The move came hours after President-elect Donald Trump announced plans to nominate Paul Atkins as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a move viewed by the crypto community as being in keeping with his promise not just to replace Gary Gensler — who has become something of a villain in crypto for the agency’s regulation-by-enforcement approach to the industry under his leadership — but to set up a more supportive regulatory environment for the crypto industry more broadly. In the same day, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said bitcoin is “just like gold only it’s virtual, it’s digital,” speaking at the DealBook conference. He further clarified that “people are not using it as a form of payment, or as a store of value” and that “it’s not a competitor for the dollar, it’s really a competitor for gold.” It’s a day of celebration for longtime bitcoin investors, who have held on for dear life, or “HODL’d” through several of the cryptocurrency’s boom and bust cycles, during which government and financial institutions remained dismissive — and even hostile — toward the asset class. That’s largely because of the cryptocurrency’s anti-establishment roots. The original idea for Bitcoin was proposed at the height of the 2008 financial crisis: a “peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution,” its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, wrote in the Bitcoin Whitepaper. In recent years, however, the industry has demonstrated the value of bitcoin to much of the institutional investing world. BlackRock , Fidelity, Invesco and others launched the first spot bitcoin ETFs at the beginning of this year — bitcoin’s “IPO” moment — and the growing demand for them by institutions has helped drive the price higher. In November, Rick Wurster, the incoming CEO of Charles Schwab , said the firm is preparing to enter spot crypto trading, pending regulatory changes expected in the next Trump administration.