Bitcoin Price Surpasses $10K For First Time In A Year

Bitcoin price surpassed $10,000 for the first time in more than a year.

The cryptocurrency hit the milestone late Friday (June 21) and by the next morning, it had climbed above $11,000. In fact, bitcoin has more than tripled in value from its low at the end of 2018, giving investors hope that the worst is over for the world’s most popular crypto.

Its rebound comes as Facebook unveiled its own digital currency, Libra, and has found some big-name backers for the project, including  Visa, Mastercard, PayPal Holdings and Uber Technologies. The firms will invest about $10 million in a consortium that will be used to govern Libra, which is designed to be a stablecoin, pegged to the value of government-issued currencies to avoid some of the wild value swings that have become endemic to crypto forms like bitcoin.

When it is rolled out, Libra will make it easier for users to send and receive digital coins across the social media platform — funds that can be used to make purchases on Facebook and across the internet. Libra has led to an increase in sales for bitcoin, with investors expecting that crypto is finally going to go mainstream.

“Smart money and institutions have certainly begun to come in,” said John Patrick Mullin, a cryptocurrency investor and blockchain consultant in Hong Kong, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Bitcoin price first rose over $10,000 in November 2017, and 18 days later hit its all-time high of nearly $20,000 before its crash. But this latest rebound, which has been less hyped, could be a sign the market is maturing.

“There are more reasons to believe in bitcoin now than there were the last time [bitcoin was at $10,000,] though I’m still not convinced that the price is sustainable,” said John Sedunov, an assistant professor of finance at Villanova University.

And while trading volumes in bitcoin and other cryptos are still far below their peak in late 2017, that boost was the result of individual investors and “overwhelmingly speculative sentiment,” explained Mati Greenspan, an analyst at eToro, a brokerage firm. “This time it seems much more reflective of true value.”