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Overhead view of busy businesswoman checking financial trading data with mobile app on smartphone in a coffee shop
BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Bitcoin is the world’s largest cryptocurrency and it surged to an all-time high of more than $60,000 Saturday evening, continuing its rally as major companies like Tesla and Mastercard put their support behind digital currency.
Bitcoin reached a record high of $61,068.88 Saturday evening as of 7:03 CST, according to Coinbase. The move puts the cryptocurrency up more than 980% over the last year. Its value has surpassed the $1 trillion mark for the second time in 2021.
Bitcoin’s rally is driven partly by increased adoption of large institutional investors and speculative demand, according to CNBC. In early February, Tesla purchased $1.5 billion in bitcoin and said it would soon start accepting the digital currency as payment for products in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Critics of Bitcoin argue it has no intrinsic value, according to Bloomberg. Popular investor Michael Burry said the digital currency is a “speculative bubble that poses more risk than opportunity” and “if you do not know how much leverage is involved in the run-up, you may not know enough to own it” in a now-deleted tweet, according to Fortune.
Bitcoin’s popularity is evident on Audible, “The Bitcoin Standard” ranks #16 amongst top trending audiobooks.