Bitcoin has broken above $125,000 for the first time in its 17-year history.
The price of Bitcoin soared to a new record high during Asia trading hours on nearly $50 billion in trading volume over the last 24 hours, per data from CoinGecko. As bullish traders piled in pushing the price upward, almost $100 million in short positions were liquidated in just one hour, according to CoinGlass. More than $200 million in BTC shorts were turned into forced buyers in the last 24 hours.
A combination of favorable macroeconomic conditions and surging institutional interest in the digital asset has served Bitcoin well throughout the year, and several analysts recently told Decrypt they expect the appetite for BTC to continue to grow, despite signs of potential exhaustion in the crypto market earlier this week.
“The broader setup remains bullish, with a prolonged government shutdown likely to continue driving interest in hard assets and supporting demand for Bitcoin as an alternative store of value,” Joe DiPasquale, CEO of crypto asset manager BitBull Capital, told Decrypt on Friday.
As the price of Bitcoin soared Friday during early afternoon trading hours in the U.S., the rally stalled as traders appeared content to take profits just below the previously all-time high mark of $124,128.
But not this time. Analysts at the British multinational bank Standard Chartered, who have long been bullish on Bitcoin, don’t think it stops here either. Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets, said in an investor note published Friday that he expects the price of Bitcoin to reach at least $135,000 in the near term and top $200,000 before the end of the year.
Users on the Myriad prediction market, developed by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, accurately predicted that Bitcoin would hit $125,000, placing odds above 90% on Friday. At the moment, users on Myriad also believe Bitcoin will outperform Ethereum, the second largest crypto asset by market cap, in the month of October.
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