Summary:
Bitcoin trading above $100,000 marks a new high.
The crypto winter is over, replaced by an Era of Good Feelings.
Trump's election has significantly influenced cryptocurrency markets.
Bitcoin’s price is up 40% since November 5.
Plans for a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve could solidify its status as a national asset.
Cryptocurrency’s newly minted respectability has come at the price of becoming just another asset class.
December 22, 2024, 8 AM ET
Until now, the phrase crypto winter meant that cryptocurrency traders were facing hard times: a period of tumbling and depressed prices that had to be weathered until the good times returned. Today, though, the cryptocurrency industry is enjoying an end-of-year season more akin to “brat summer”: This month, crypto prices hit previously unheard-of highs, with bitcoin trading above $100,000. In this new Era of Good Feelings—to borrow a phrase from early-19th-century American history—skeptics have become believers, and a digital-economic instrument designed to circumvent, if not replace, the traditional financial system is becoming more integrated into it.
The catalyst for this boom, of course, was last month’s election of Donald Trump. Bitcoin’s price fell this week, but it’s still up almost 40 percent since November 5, and other major cryptocurrencies, such as ethereum and ripple, have seen similar spikes. It’s not hard to see why. Trump nominated Cantor Fitzgerald CEO and crypto enthusiast Howard Lutnick to be his secretary of commerce. He named Paul Atkins, also a crypto advocate, as the next head of the Securities Exchange Commission, replacing Gary Gensler, who became crypto’s bête noire for bringing lawsuits against the biggest crypto exchanges and numerous other players in the industry. And Trump recently repeated his campaign promise to set up a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, which would require the Treasury Department to purchase billions of dollars’ worth of the cryptocurrency and hold it as a permanent national asset.
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