To the moon... and beyond?
If there’s one thing that could describe the crypto scene lately, it’s that everybody (and their sisters, and cousins) has at least been curious, if not explicitly evangelistic, about it after the OG cryptocurrency bitcoin shot up to a historic milestone of $100,000 earlier this month.
2024 kicked off with a massive rally led by the biggest cryptocurrency after the SEC begrudgingly gave the green light to 11 spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Almost a year later, bitcoin has drawn record numbers of institutional and retail investors into its orbit, to a point that the “digital gold” ETF has now even surpassed crypto founder Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin stash, with companies like MicroStrategy riding the crypto current to eye-watering, at-times confusing, valuations.
The Trump bump: crypto edition
But the major turning point for “magic internet money” came in November, after the self-proclaimed “crypto president” won the election. Since Donald Trump’s victory, bitcoin is up ~50%, with memecoin mania returning to an industry that has experienced multiple winters. Alongside the recent resignation of crypto-skeptic SEC chair Gary Gensler, who is set to be replaced by crypto-friendly Paul Atkins, Trump will be working alongside the most pro-crypto Congress in history, with 262 pro-crypto politicians starting from January: a dream-come-true for digital traders, with 22 of the top 25 cryptocurrencies going up this year.