Bitcoin Trades Near Three-Year Highs, Briefly Crossing The $14K Mark

Bitcoin briefly crossed the $14,000 milestone on Saturday, marking its highest price quote since January 2018. From the opening price of $7,194.89, on Jan. 1, BTC is up 90.5% on a year-to-date basis, according to data from Yahoo Finance.

What Happened: Economic stimulus plans and revival programs aimed at overcoming the coronavirus setbacks burden the purchasing power of currencies. According to the Wall Street Journal, some investors believe that Bitcoin’s potential as an inflation-hedge is driving up demand for the digital asset.

A higher adoption rate among institutional and individual investors could systematically push Bitcoin and other virtual currencies as mainstream assets.

Billionaire investors like Time Draper and entrepreneurs like Twitter Inc TWTR CEO Jack Dorsey have publicly backed Bitcoin for a long time.

Publicly traded financial services company Square Inc SQ purchased $50 million worth of BTC in the first week of October. Dorsey is the founder and CEO of Square.

Why Does It Matter: In May last year, the open-sourced cryptocurrency underwent a major event called "halving." A halving takes place every time 210,000 new blocks are mined, and the one in May was the third halving event after 2012 and 2016. It is one of the control points to manage the supply of Bitcoin.

Looking at past trends, BTC price surged after each halving event. In 2013, BTC shot up from $150 to $1000 in a span of two months. Whereas in late 2017, a year after the second halving, BTC peaked close to $20,000.

The latest surge comes on the back of increased mainstream adoption. PayPal Inc. PYPL last month announced it was adding cryptocurrency offerings on its platform.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said last week its native cryptocurrency "JPM Coin" was now live. The banking giant also dubbed Square's Bitcoin purchase as a "vote of confidence for the cryptocurrency's future."

Price Action: BTC traded at $13,692.10 on the last look, up about 4.5% over a week.

Peculiarly, other cryptocurrencies aren't following Bitcoin's trajectory, with Ethereum (ETH) down 2.31% in the trailing 7-day period at $398.65 at press time. XRP has dropped 6.12% in a similar period at $0.24. Chainlink is down 6.75% at $11.48.