Bitcoin now ‘more valuable than Alibaba’

If Bitcoin investment was a company, it would be ahead of giants Tencent, Alibaba and Visa in terms of value, after the cryptocurrency doubled in price in a month.

Bitcoin hit an intra-day high of over US$40,000 in the past 24 hours, double that a month ago. At 5pm of Friday, its price was US$38,749. 

At the current price, Bitcoin is the world’s No. 8 most valued asset, with a market value of US$720 billion, behind Apple (No. 1), Tesla (No. 6) and Facebook (No. 7) but ahead of Tencent (No. 9), Alibaba (No. 11) and Visa (No. 13), according to asset data organization AssetDash.

In 2020, Bitcoin’s price had tripled to hit US$29,000 by December, already making it one of the most popular and promising assets worldwide.

Bitcoin is a stable and still promising digital asset for investors to fight inflation and meet value preservation demands, said Yu Jianing, rotating chairman of the China Communications Industry Association Blockchain Specialized Committee, authorized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Blockchain is a key technology used in Bitcoin. After every 210,000 “blocks” created, the reward of each block, or the output of Bitcoin will be halved, according to Bitcoin’s mechanism designed by its founder Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin now can be regarded as an “family heirloom and gold equivalent” as a digital asset, said Yu, who is also the president of Huobi University.

The price surge comes with more institution investors, halved supply, transaction support of mainstream platforms and recognition, said analysts and industry insiders.

China’s official digital currency or the e-yuan, which is in trial operation in several regions nationwide, may adopt blockchain technology.

The  technology won’t be directly used by central bank but it will be adopted for second-tier banks for e-yuan such as ICBC. Banks and financial organizations need trackable and smart contract features of blockchain, Yu added.