Photo of a Bitcoin on a smartphone screen, against the backdrop of rising prices, in Brussels on December 17, 2024. (AFP / Nicolas TUCAT)
Bitcoin broke its record on Monday, surpassing the $109,000 mark a few hours before the inauguration of Donald Trump, who launched his own digital currency this weekend and is expected to ease regulations on the sector once he returns to the White House .
The first digital currency by capitalization suddenly increased around 6:30 a.m. until reaching a high of $109,241. It was trading at $107,553 around 8:10 a.m. GMT.
Bitcoin is now evolving at levels far from being imagined 16 years ago when it was created, and well beyond its value on November 5, the day of the presidential election, when it hovered around $69,000.
The controversial cryptocurrency market, in search of credibility, sees the return of the Republican leader to the White House as a boon, especially with Elon Musk at his side.
Because after describing the sector as a fraud during his first term, Donald Trump, who is to be inaugurated president for the second time on Monday, changed his tune during his campaign – partly financed by the sector – proclaiming his intention to make the United States “the world capital of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies”.
– High volatility –
The president-elect even launched his own digital currency during the night from Friday to Saturday, an announcement which caused great volatility on the markets in recent hours.
Some 200 million tokens of this currency were put on the market, with dazzling success: trading around 7 dollars shortly after its launch, the “Trump” rose to 75 dollars, before oscillating on Monday around of 45 dollars.
The future head of state presented this new currency as a “same coin”, a cryptocurrency intended to capitalize on popular enthusiasm around a personality, a movement or a viral phenomenon on the internet.
The “same coin” has no economic or transactional utility and is often identified as a purely speculative asset.
-On Sunday, it was the future First Lady, Melania Trump, who, in turn, put her own cryptocurrency online, called Melania.
Bitcoin took off at the end of last week, driven by information from Bloomberg, which cites sources close to the matter, according to which the president-elect plans to publish a decree elevating cryptocurrency to the rank of political priority and giving players in the sector a voice within his administration.
The article also reports that the creation of a national strategic reserve of bitcoins is indeed being considered, which would encompass the existing holdings that the government holds in this crypto.
– “THE’S NO MATTER!!!” –
At the beginning of December, Donald Trump took credit for bitcoin crossing the symbolic $100,000 mark. “Congratulations to bitcoin fans!!! 100,000 dollars!!! IT'S NO MATTER!!! Together, we will make America great again,” he declared on his Truth Social network.
Bitcoin was born in 2008 from a libertarian dream: to escape the control of financial institutions by relying on a technology (“blockchain”) which makes it possible to record transactions in a decentralized and unfalsifiable manner thanks to a network of computers in the whole world.
Over the years, bitcoin, like other cryptocurrencies, has been involved in several financial scandals, with the currency being favored by hackers or to monetize illicit activities.
Today he is in search of respectability. In 2021, El Salvador was the first country to adopt it as legal tender, without convincing the population, followed by the Central African Republic. Some merchants accept it as a means of payment, as Elon Musk did for his Tesla cars before turning around.
In the United States, two new investment products (ETFs), one tracking the performance of bitcoin, the other that of ether, the second main cryptocurrency, have attracted tens of billions this year, contributing to the soaring course.
