Was wondering what was behind the rise.
It's also the approval of Bitcoin ETF's by the SEC earlier this year.
Normally there's a bit of a drawdown prior to a Halving. And there's never a new all time high right before a Halving (which just happened last week). Usually, about 12-18 months after a Halving you get a new all time high that is 4 to 8x the prior all time high. Then there's a draw-down for a bit until the next Halving.
But, that's been purely with nothing but Anarcho-Libertarian hobbyists running the BTC market for the most part. If you have big Wall Street money in it as well, demand increases considerably and remains constant.
Blackrock and Fidelity have publicly come out and recommended that anywhere from 1% to 5% of a customer's net worth should be in BTC, it's starting to displace gold (or at least augment it). Privately, Blackrock has been rumored to be suggesting to their large customers to be more aggressive and consider up to a 28% allocation to BTC or other cryptocurrencies. Saudis are hot on it, Hong Kong is hot on it, Euro markets are hot on it.
There are some VERY INTERESTING numbers coming out of people analyzing the crypto wallets (they're visible on the Blockchain) for Blackrock, Fidelity, and Grayscale funds. Grayscale is losing customers right and left because of their fee structures, now that they have competition from Blackrock and others. So they have high outflows which normally would tank the BTC market. However, demand from the other ETF's is soaking that up and then some. What's super suspicious is the fact that Blackrock and Fidelity seem to be in collusion on their heavy buy days. If Blackrock sinks $500M into BTC, Fidelity has a 0 day. And vice-versa. The mining algorithm only allows for miners to produce 900 coins a day right now, and these orgs are sucking up 3500 to 8000 a day. In mid-April, the miners will only be able to produce 450 coins a day (the Halving).
I don't think they can collude once Grayscale runs out of BTC holdings due to running out of bleeding customers (Grayscale accounted for about 50% of daily BTC available for sale). That's 50% of supply, now take away another 5% due to the Halving. Grayscale will stop selling either by policy change or running out of fleeing customers sometime in April or May, if they don't do it sooner.
The crypto market is out to displace gold's market cap in this BTC halving cycle (BTC has a market cap of $1.4 trillion, gold is about $12 trillion). And it's probably out to take a big bite out of global finance (bonds, treasury bills, reserves) in the 2030's.
If you've got it, HODL. If you don't got it... try and get a tenth of a BTC. It's $7K right now, well spent IMO.
I'll be shocked if we aren't above $150k by end of summer, and I expect to see a rally to somewhere between $400k and $500k in 2025. Then there will be doom and gloom in 2026 with a massive market retraction, BTC will shrivel to below $200k (maybe even to $100k) and then the 2028 rally and Halving will drive it over $1,000,000.