Bitcoin jumped to a record high after Mastercard and Bank of New York Mellon moved to make it easier for customers to use cryptocurrencies.
The largest digital asset rose as much as 7.4 per cent to $48,364, surpassing the all-time high reached Monday after Tesla announced it would hold $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency on its balance sheet. The wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index also touched a record.
“The crypto-asset world is bursting into the realms of traditional finance at a staggering pace,” said Simon Peters, an analyst at investment platform eToro.
Mastercard singled out so-called “stablecoins,” which often peg their value to that of another asset, such as the US dollar. Mastercard has already partnered with crypto card providers such as Wirex and BitPay, but has required digital currencies to be converted into fiat before processing payments for transactions on its network.
Bank of New York Mellon said Thursday it will hold, transfer and issue Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for institutional customers.
Interest in cryptocurrencies has accelerated yet again as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, emerged as a central figure for the crypto faithful, supporting arguments among proponents that Wall Street and the mainstream are becoming more receptive to the asset class. Detractors maintain speculators are behind Bitcoin’s rise and the bubble will once again burst. Even before announcing Tesla’s bet on Bitcoin, Musk said he was a supporter of Bitcoin on a social audio app and made multiple tongue-in-cheek references on Twitter to Dogecoin — a Shiba Inu-themed crypto started as a joke — sending prices soaring.
Twitter has also done some “upfront thinking” around how to handle Bitcoin, including if employees and vendors ask to be paid in the cryptocurrency and whether the firm needs to have the digital asset on its balance sheet, CFO Ned Segal said in an interview on CNBC.
Uber may eventually accept Bitcoin as payment: CEO to CNBC
Uber will not buy bitcoins with cash but may eventually accept it as payment, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told channel CNBC on Thursday. “We will keep our cash safe, we are not in the speculation business,” he said.
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