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Bitcoin rose to a new all-time high on Wednesday, breaking its January record.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 2% at $108,955.10, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as high as $109,500.
“Bitcoin’s new high has been concocted by an array of favorable ingredients in the macro cauldron, namely softer U.S. inflation numbers, a de-escalation in the U.S.-China trade war and the Moody’s downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt, which has put the spotlight on alternative stores of value like bitcoin,” said Antoni Trenchev, cofounder of crypto exchange Nexo.
Bitcoin hits a new record Wednesday
“We’ve entered an alternate universe very different from early April when global macro concerns were at their peak and bitcoin slumped to $74,000,” he added. “It’s possible a three-month window has opened for risk assets to thrive as a broader agreement between the U.S. and China is thrashed out.”
Bitcoin’s price has been steadily climbing in May, up 16% so far the month, driven by corporate momentum and adoption by Wall Street. Cumulative inflows into ETFs tracking the price of bitcoin surpassed $40 billion last week and have seen just two days of outflows in May.
On-chain data also shows lower selling pressure as indicated by bitcoin inflows into exchanges and increased liquidity in the crypto market as measured by new records of the amount of Tether stablecoin USDT, a gauge of crypto market liquidity, sitting on exchanges, according to CryptoQuant.