Bitcoin was carving out fresh history on Friday, and generating a ton of buzz on Wall Street and Main Street alike, as well as on social-media platforms, as the world’s No. 1 cryptocurrency staged a sharp rally that took its market value well above $1 trillion.
At last check, a single bitcoin traded near a record at $54,827.69, up 5%, and was pushing the crypto that was written into code back in 2009 to a total market capitalization $1 trillion.
The stratospheric rise of the digital asset created by a person or persons known as Satoshi Nakamoto had investors putting the historic move into perspective on Twitter.
One tweet focused on the email that led to the digital asset, which was born in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis by Nakamoto, who is credited with writing the software that created the decentralized currency as a challenge to the perception that central banks were printing fiat currency, like dollars DXY, -0.21% and euros EURUSD, +0.15%, with reckless abandon to paper over the cracks in the financial system caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
A trillion dollars marks a momentous occasion for the blockchain-backed asset, which was worth fractions of a cent at inception but has commanded the world’s attention, as this tweet from the Twitter handle associated with crypto trading platform Krakken conveys, referencing Michael Meyer’s Dr. Evil character:
Bitcoin prices have been on a tear. They have climbed nearly 90% so far in 2021. By comparison, gold GC00, +0.19%, a recent rival to the digital asset as a store of value, has declined by more than 6% since the start of the year.
Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.19% is up over 3% thus far this year, the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.01% has risen over 4% over the same period and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.17% has returned nearly 8%.
Bitcoin’s rise since its inception is perhaps even more impressive, as the following chart shows.
Cameron Winklevoss, who with his twin brother Tyler, have made growing the cryptocurrency market their mission, offered this tweet about the evolution of bitcoins from a white paper to a $1 trillion idea.
The Harvard-educated twins bought $11 million worth of bitcoins in 2013, according to a report in the New York Times, that is worth billions now.
A tweet from Tyler Winklevoss took a shot at hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who on CNBC earlier on Friday said that he didn’t give much thought to digital assets like bitcoin.
“I just don’t spend much time thinking about cryptocurrencies…I don’t see the economic underpinning of cryptocurrencies,” Griffin told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “I understand how to value a stock —the net present value of earnings —I understand how to think about currency exchange rates around the world,” the Citadel LLC founder said.
Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research, compared the move in bitcoin to Tesla’s epic run toward a trillion dollar market value. In some ways, that comparison is considered apt because it was the electric-vehicle maker’s announcement last week that it was investing $1.5 billion in bitcoin and would eventually accept the cryptocurrency for its products that contributed to the latest spike in the bitcoin price.
Tesla TSLA, -0.46% stock has been viewed as a speculative asset in its own right, similar to bitcoin, and CEO Elon Musk is viewed as embodying some of the libertarian leanings that have underpinned the creation of the crypto 12 years ago.
And if it is hard to really think about the scale of a $1 trillion asset. Here’s one illustration that might put it in perspective.
To be sure, $1 trillion bitcoin, representing about 60% of the total value of all cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap, pales in comparison to gold, which boasted a total market value of around $9 trillion, including jewelry, bullion as well as exchange-traded fund.
Anthony Pompliano, co-founder and partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets, speculated, however, that bitcoin could surpass gold in 2029.
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