Cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) just hit $100,000 for the first time, nearly one month after President-elect Donald Trump won the election.
Bitcoin has more than doubled its value in 2024. In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission granted the cryptocurrency the ability to be tracked by the U.S.-listed exchange-traded funds. Bitcoin is the most popular crypto in the U.S.
Earlier this year, Trump announced his venture into the crypto world by launching World Liberty Financial. In October, customers were able to purchase tokens of the digital currency. In a video promoting it, Trump said, “Crypto is the future. Let’s embrace this incredible technology and lead the world in digital economy.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Trump transition team via email for comment.
Trump’s enthusiasm about crypto, and Bitcoin in particular, has been cited as a key reason for the market skyrocketing since he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris last month. The president-elect has vowed to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet” and backed the creation of a “strategic bitcoin reserve” earlier this year.
Weeks after the election, J.D. Seraphine, CEO of crypto-based AI validation platform Raiinmaker, told Newsweek that “Trump’s victory has certainly accelerated price movement” for Bitcoin, maintaining that there was “a great deal of hype surrounding Trump coming into office and creating regulatory clarity for cryptocurrency in the U.S.”
Qiibee CEO Gabriele Giancola correctly predicted that Trump’s win would result in Bitcoin “reaching $100,000 this year or shortly after” the president-elect returns to the White House, while cautioning that “a short-term correction within the next one-two months is plausible.”
Bitcoin was trading around $68,000 on Election Day and nearly reached the $100,000 mark in the following weeks, briefly climbing as high as $99,347 on November 22. The crypto was trading in excess of $103,000 by late Wednesday night.
Some experts have predicted that Bitcoin’s price will soar much higher if the incoming Trump administration does establish a strategic reserve, although others have suggested that the reserve is unlikely to come to fruition.
“A Bitcoin strategic reserve fund set up by the U.S. government will be the catalyst that sets Bitcoin’s price trajectory on course to reach the highest end of analysts’ projections—with some predicting Bitcoin to reach $500,000,” Songping Que, senior manager of blockchain-based crypto and app platform Neo Blockchain, said in previous comments to Newsweek.
The president-elect’s position on crypto has drastically changed since his first term. Trump revealed in 2019 that he was “not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies,” saying on X, formerly Twitter, that they were “not money” and “based on thin air.” He called crypto a “scam” during a Fox News interview two years later.
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Anna Commander
AND Aila Slisco
Anna Commander is a Newsweek Editor and writer based in Florida. Her focus is reporting on crime, weather and breaking …
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