Bitcoin rallies above US$30,000 for first-time

Digital currency Bitcoin expanded its record-smashing rally about Saturday (Jan 2), beginning the entire year with a surge more than US$30,000 for the very first time, with ever more traders and investors betting that it's coming to learning to be a mainstream payment method.

The cost of the world's most popular cryptocurrency traded as excessive as US$33,099 on Saturday, with virtually all other markets closed over the first weekend in 2021. It had been last up about 12 per cent at US$32,883.

Bitcoin advanced more than 300 per cent found in 2020, and with the latest leg more significant has added a lot more than 50  % since crossing US$20,000 just two weeks ago.

The blockchain currency has only been with us for a decade roughly, and in 2020 it has seen demand grow from greater U.S. buyers, attracted by its perceived inflation-hedging qualities and prospect of quick gains, in addition to expectations it would turn into a mainstream payments method.

Investors said limited supply of bitcoin - made by so-called "mining" computers that validate blocks of transactions by competing to fix mathematical puzzles - features helped power upward movements over recent days.

Some also found it as a good safe-haven play during the COVID-19 pandemic, akin to gold.

"It is rather likely that the asset will eventually pass US$100,000 per coin," Sergey Nazarov, cofounder of Chainlink, a global blockchain project, wrote within an email on Saturday. "Folks have been steadily burning off faith within their government currencies for a long time, and the monetary plans resulting from the financial influence of the coronavirus possess just accelerated this decline."

It trades on various exchanges, the largest which is usually Coinbase, which is itself preparing to go public and be the first such platform to list on Wall Street.

Multiple competitor cryptocurrencies use very similar blockchain, or electric ledger, technology. Ethereum, the second biggest, gained 465 per cent in 2020 and was up almost 7 % on Saturday.