After breaking through $25,000 yesterday, the price of bitcoin continued to rise overnight, at one point approaching $27,000. As of press time, it was quoted at $26,870, up more than 8% in 24 hours.
It is worth noting that bitcoin's market value at one point exceeded $500 billion (3.27 trillion yuan), one trillion more than Kweichow Moutai's market value (2.3 trillion yuan) and equivalent to five Henrui Pharmaceuticals, 10 CICC companies and 20 Yunnan Baiyao.
In the past 24 hours, exchanges have cleared more than $131 million worth of bearish bitcoin futures contracts, according to Bybt.com. As long as the derivatives market remains bullish, more short positions will be unwound in the near future.
According to noted trader Philip Swift, during the current period of rapid bitcoin growth, the number of large sellers with more than 1,000 bitcoins in their wallets has dwindled. Instead, many retail investors with between one and 10 coins in their wallets have started to flood the market.
Moreover, bitcoin's surge has been followed by digital currencies such as Ethereum and Litecoin.
What's the future of Bitcoin? Analysts are divided
With the rally, most analysts are strongly bullish on Bitcoin.
Wall Street financial analyst and Bitcoin advocate Max Keizer said in an interview that he believes Bridgewater Co-chairman Ray Dalio and Tesla founder Elon Musk will invest in Bitcoin sooner or later. He thinks Dalio will put 10% to 20% of his portfolio in Bitcoin in the next few months.
Tim Draper, venture capitalist and founder of DFJ, said BTC would be 10 times its current price by late 2022 or early 2023. According to public information, DFJ is one of the world's leading venture capital firms, with more than $6 billion under management.
Antoni Trenchev, co-founder and managing partner of Nexo, a cryptocurrency financial institution, says media and retail investors can participate appropriately, as they are conspicuously absent from the rally.
Garrick Hileman, director of research at Blockchain.com, predicted that the value of Bitcoin could climb to $1 trillion as soon as next year, at a price of $54,000, as more large institutions are willing to hold bitcoin, boosting its reserve currency status.
As bitcoin volatility has increased, so has the difficulty of investing in it. Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group, recently revealed that he has sold half of his Bitcoin assets. He explained that with bitcoin at a new high, it should now be treated like any other investment, in which it is best to sell high and buy low whenever possible.
Of course, there are analysts who are raising the stakes, and investors should be more cautious.
Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University in the US, has warned investors that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have no intrinsic value and should not appear in the portfolios of retail or institutional investors.
First of all, Bitcoin is not a currency, it's not a unit of account, it's not a means of payment, it's not a stable store of value, Roubini said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. Bitcoin is not even an asset.
He stressed that bitcoin's growth was speculative and self-fulfilling, driven entirely by manipulation [by market crocodiles]. Bitcoin is close to the point where a giant bubble bursts.