Blistering bitcoin: Cryptocurrency surges past $61,000 mark in record high as latest bull run accelerates

Bitcoin’s latest blistering bull run continued as it hit a new high of $61,000 on Sunday largely amid the increased adoption of the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin topped the record mark of $60,000 on Saturday at 5:54 pm IST and further surpassed the $61,000 price in the wee hours of Sunday, as per the data from CoinMarketCap. The digital currency was trading at $61,090 at the time of filing this report. Bitcoin price had more than doubled from $29,000 at the beginning of 2021 and grown over $10,000 in a week. The year-on-year growth, as of March 14, 2021, in bitcoin price stood at a staggering 1,063 per cent while its market cap, which had a share of 60 per cent in the total market cap of cryptocurrencies globally, stood at $1.14 trillion.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose tweets have influenced bitcoin price movement in the recent past, is betting big on bitcoin. The company had last month in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission had said that it invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin so far and that it might soon accept it as payments for its products in the future. Large financial enterprises such as Square had purchased bitcoins worth $170 million last month, up from $50 million bitcoins it bought back in October last year.

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Earlier this month, PayPal had announced the acquisition of Israel-based crypto startup Curv. In October 2021, PayPal had partnered with crypto firm Paxos to allow its users in the US buy and sell cryptocurrencies from their PayPal account. Likewise, Visa and Mastercard have also been looking to adopt cryptocurrencies.

The surge in bitcoin price was also witnessed on the back of the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package from the US government. Bitcoin price had jumped last year as well when the US Congress passed the $484 billion Covid relief package in April. It coincided with the increase in bitcoin price from over $6,900 to nearly $9,000, showing the effect of the bill on investors’ appetite for risks involved in cryptocurrencies. Similarly, the $900 billion second stimulus announced in December witnessed an increase from over $23,000 to nearly $29,000 on December 31, 2020.