The price of bitcoin rose to over $57,655 on Monday for the first time since May 12 as investors speculated that it would retest the previous all-time high set in April 2021.
Earlier in the year, the largest cryptocurrency by valuation has seen a price surge of over $64,000 before retreating to below $30,000 in July on reports of a clampdown in China.
Experts say investors are also speculating on the potential approval of a futures-based bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) and prices could also be driven by strong retail accumulation. Coindesk noted that an investor purchased $1.6 billion worth of bitcoin on Wednesday in a couple of minutes.
Fears of a possible US campaign against cryptocurrencies had grown in September after Gary Gensler described the crypto market as the ‘Wild West,’ and said there was a need for a robust regime over the industry.
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Those fears may have been put to bed in October when the Gensler testified in a House hearing that he had no intention of banning crypto transactions.
“That would be up to Congress,” he said at the hearing. Gensler’s comments come just a week after Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chairman told another House committee there was no plan to ban cryptos which he called “asset class”.
The statements have allayed investors’ fears and helped erase most of the bearish sentiments that have followed the clampdown by Chinese authorities.
Apart from bitcoin, Ethereum the second-largest cryptocurrency rose by 1.1 percent to post a high of $3,601.99.
Nonetheless, the bull run in the market has still not changed how Jamie Dimon, Chief Executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co sees bitcoin. At a conference on Monday, the CEO expressed hopes that cryptocurrencies will be regulated and that he personally thinks bitcoin is “worthless”.
“No matter what anyone thinks about it, the government is going to regulate it. They are going to regulate it for (anti-money laundering) purposes, for (Bank Secrecy Act) purposes, for tax,” Dimon said.
He once called bitcoin a fraud and then later said he regretted the statement. JPMorgan this year gave wealth management clients access to cryptocurrency funds, meaning the bank’s financial advisers can accept buy and sell orders from clients for five cryptocurrency products. The price of bitcoin was selling at $57,278 at the time of writing this article.
