The world's largest cryptocurrency hit a high of $69,202, topping an all-time peak reached in November of 2021. It then moved lower later in Tuesday's session.
Bitcoin's surge is driven by "simple supply and demand," says Ben Laidler, globlal markets strategist at eToro, and comes just weeks after the Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 spot bitcoin ETFs in late January.
"And since then, those ETFs have accumulated 4% of all the bitcoin there is in the world, just in 6 weeks. Just to put that in perspective, that's proportionally about twice the size of the gold ETFs, which have been out there for a lot longer."
And it's not your typical Wall Street type who's powering the bitcoin boom.
"Your average retail investor has up to 30% of his assets invested in crypto. That's an absolutely huge number. This is the first asset class, which has developed over time, which has been led by retail investors."
Supply of bitcoin is limited to 21 million, of which 19 million have already been mined.
That's helped drive demand, along with the prospect of the U.S. Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, which often prompts investors to divert capital into higher-yielding, volatile assets.
Bitcoin is up 160% since October, with more than one-third of its rise coming in February alone. That marks a sharp contrast to 2022, when the market was beaten into an 18-month long crypto winter, plagued by a string of high-profile corporate bankruptcies and scandal.
Net flows into the 10 largest U.S. spot bitcoin funds reached $2.17 billion last week, according to LSEG data.
