Bitcoin hits record high ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration
The world's largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, hit a new all-time high on Monday morning, surpassing $109,900 (€106,485), while incoming US President Trump saw his own meme coin being sold for billions of dollars in just two days, as the cryptocurrency market buzzed with hopes for the 47th US President's crypto-friendly policies.
"The cryptocurrency market witnessed a significant surge in volatility, reaching an all-time high of $3.72tn (€3.63tn) in total capitalisation on Monday morning," said Alex Kuptsikevich, the FxPro chief market analyst in his written commentary, adding that he expects further gains boosted by market enthusiasm towards crypto assets.
Bitcoin has been climbing ever since Trump was elected and surged from around $70,000 (€67,825) at the beginning of November to beyond $100,000 (€96,893) in two months.
The then President-elect - now President - launched his own meme-coin on Friday. The token dubbed $Trump was priced at around $6 (€5.81) but surged to as high as $75.35 (€73.01). About 80% of these coins are held by CIC Digital LLC, which is directly linked to the Trump family business.
Its success was slightly diminished when another meme coin appeared on Sunday, as incoming First Lady Melania Trump followed suit with her launch of $MELANIA. The price of the latter doubled, gaining a more-than $2bn (€1.9bn) market capitalisation for the coin.
The total value of Trump's token reached more than $14bn (€13.6bn) over the weekend, before falling to some $10bn (€9.7bn) by Monday morning, according to CoinMarketCap.
The launch of the meme coins sparked criticism that Donald Trump is taking financial advantage of his political position.
Once a sceptic who said some years ago that bitcoin "seems like a scam",
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