The price does not stop rising. This should delight the holders of the virtual currency, but which worries the observers of the market. A new spike in the price of bitcoin on Friday, February 19, brings the value of all bitcoins created since 2009 to more than $ 1,000 billion a market boosted by the enthusiasm of some large companies, despite concerns regulators. At around 5:40 p.m. Local time, the value of bitcoin hit a new record at $ 54,790, up 5.5% on the session. By 8:30 p.m., that was even higher, at around $ 55,155.
With more than 18.6 million bitcoins created since its launch in 2009 by anonymous people, the entire market is potentially worth $ 1,015 billion, according to News Websites.
Since the start of the year, the price of bitcoin has climbed 89%, a performance that has raised concerns among some market participants that a bubble similar to that of 2017 may explode. Almost as nase “as the dollar according to Elon Musk, whose Tesla company participated in the price hike by announcing that it bought $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin, defended his group’s decision on Twitter on Friday. When money suffers from a negative interest rate, one would have to be foolish not to look elsewhere, he argued, adding that bitcoin almost as dull as fiat money insists on the almost.
Bitcoin enthusiasts see this decentralized network, created by anonymous people in 2008, as a way to protect themselves against the actions of central banks. The maximum number of bitcoins in circulation has been set at 21 million, an amount set in stone in an operation where no one has control over monetary policy. In the last few months, many financial companies have also shown their interest in bitcoin. From the online payment giant Paypal in October to the juggernaut of BlackRock investment funds at the end of January via BNY Mellon, the oldest bank on Wall Street, many American financial players have announced that they are preparing the launch of services to buy, sell or use cryptocurrencies.
The fear of a bubble burst. But bitcoin’s insatiable growth worries market watchers, who believe that with a price that has quintupled in a year, a sharp correction, or even the bursting of a bubble, is likely.
Musk’s Tweets have changed everything in the last few weeks; we are not dealing with rational purchases, “said a cryptocurrency broker who asked to remain anonymous. Central banks, on the other hand, regularly criticize cryptocurrencies, like European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, who called bitcoin a “highly speculative asset” in February. The French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire admitted to him on Friday that bitcoin was “completely” escaping the States. “It’s a private currency, which can have its interests. Some can freely speculate on bitcoin, they each take their risks, he said on the Canal + channel. He said he was more “worried” about Facebook’s currency project, Libra, which could destabilize the euro.
At $ 1,000 billion, the bitcoin market theoretically exceeds the market capitalization of Tesla or the Chinese group Tencent and is approaching levels of Alphabet, the parent company of Google ($ 1,400 billion). JP Morgan analysts had predicted that bitcoin’s “capitalization” could eventually join that of gold used for financial purposes, which they estimate at $ 2.6 trillion. However, the concept of market size for a currency does not convince many economists. Also, some of the bitcoins issued have already disappeared, especially during the collapse of various platforms in the early years of cryptocurrency.
