Share this article

Bitcoin Sets New All-Time High Above $28.5K; Bulls Back in the Driver's Seat

Institutional investors are perceived to be driving this record-setting run.

Updated Sep 14, 2021, 10:49 a.m. Published Dec 30, 2020, 8:22 a.m.

After seeming to take a couple of days to catch its breath following its record-setting run over the weekend, the price of bitcoin (BTC) once again resumed its torrid upward pace, setting a new all-time high $28,579.59 early Wednesday morning.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW

Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto for Advisors Newsletter today. See all newsletters

By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.

BTC topped the previous high-water mark of $28,352.63 set less than 72 hours earlier, before dropping back to $27,772.99, up 4.14% in the last 24 hours. The price of BTC has risen more than 295% year to date.
Institutional investors are perceived to be driving this record-setting run. Among them: Anthony Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital ($25 million in December); MassMutual ($100 million in December); and Guggenheim (up to 10% of its $5 billion macro fund).
With the end of the year looming, some fund managers may also be buying BTC so they can brag next year about being smart enough to get in in 2020 while neglecting to say at which price they had done so.
In addition, the U.S. Federal Reserve, along with other central banks, has been printing money with abandon, trying to stave off the worst economic effects of the pandemic as U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing Congress to pass an even bigger relief package to allow for larger stimulus checks. These actions are viewed by many as potential catalysts for inflation and bad for the U.S. dollar, both of which could be positive for BTC.

UPDATE (Dec. 30, 8:51 UTC): Adds latest price activity.

Bitcoin ATH

Kevin Reynolds

Kevin Reynolds is editor-in-chief at CoinDesk. Prior to joining the company in mid-2020, Reynolds spent 23 years at Bloomberg, where he won two CEO awards for moving the needle for the entire company and established himself as one of the world's leading experts in real-time financial news. In addition to having done almost every job in the newsroom, Reynolds built, scaled and ran products for every asset class, including First Word, a 250-person global news/analysis service for professional clients, as well as Bloomberg's Speed Desk and the training program that all Bloomberg News hires worldwide are required to take. He also turned around several other operations, including the company's flash headlines desk and was instrumental in the turnaround of Bloomberg's BGOV unit. He shares a patent for a content management system he helped design, is a Certified Scrum Master, and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He owns bitcoin, ether, polygon and solana.