Investors said limited supply of bitcoin – produced by so-called “mining” computers that validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles – has helped power upward moves over recent days.
Some also saw it as a safe-haven play during the COVID-19 pandemic, akin to gold.
“It’s very likely that the asset will eventually pass $US100,000 per coin,” Sergey Nazarov, cofounder of Chainlink, a global blockchain project, wrote in an email on Saturday. “People have been steadily losing faith in their government currencies for years, and the monetary policies resulting from the economic impact of the coronavirus have only accelerated this decline.”
It trades on numerous exchanges, the largest of which is Coinbase, which is itself preparing to go public and become the first such platform to list on Wall Street.
Multiple competitor cryptocurrencies use similar blockchain, or electronic ledger, technology. Ethereum, the second biggest, gained 465 per cent in 2020 and was up almost 5 per cent on Sunday at $US768.96.