TOKYO (Reuters) – Bitcoin consolidated about $ 60,000 on Monday, taking a breather from the record high of the weekend as investors prepared for inflation concerns and US stimulus spending to drive it even higher.
The world’s most popular cryptocurrency slipped as low as $ 58,956.90 early in the Asian session, dropping from Saturday’s record high of $ 61,781.83.
The protest was possibly dampened by a Reuters report that India will follow a ban on digital assets, a rain cloud for bitcoin, after high-end ratios of the year such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, and investment giant Goldman Sachs and BlackRock.
Bitcoin has more than doubled in 2021, after quadrupling last year.
“Investment by institutional investors and companies is increasing. This is what I call the financing of bitcoin, ”said Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist at Mizuho Securities.
“It’s becoming an asset that investors can no longer ignore.”
Bitcoin’s weekend boom was helped by an improvement in risk appetite in financial markets after President Joe Biden signed into law his $ 1.9 billion fiscal stimulus package and ordered an accelerated vaccination.
According to Justin d’Anethan, sales manager of digital asset industry Diginex in Hong Kong, the momentum increased to thinner markets over the weekend, with technical factors pushing the move higher.
“The crypto market is heavily derivative,” he noted.
“A small increase caused many liquidations throughout Saturday and Sunday, which became a non-small movement.”
Seth Melamed, the Tokyo-based chief operating officer for cryptocurrency exchanges, says legislation of the kind proposed by India will not be an obstacle to further profits for bitcoin.
“Because it is decentralized, banning the government or accepting it is irrelevant,” Melamed said. “Capital will find a way.”
Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Additional reporting by Sagarika Jaisinghani and Alun John; Edited by Vidya Ranganathan and Jacqueline Wong