Bitcoin price hits record high against UK pound

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The price of bitcoin has hit a record high against the pound, rising above £54,000 on Tuesday for the first time in its history.

The cryptocurrency is yet to achieve an all-time high against the US dollar, coming to within just a few hundred dollars from the peak of $68,990 from November 2021.

Bitcoin has also seen record highs against other major fiat currencies, reaching a new high against the Japanese Yen last month, with both the UK and Japan falling into recession at the end of last year.

The latest bitcoin rally has been primarily driven by institutional investment following the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve the first ever spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) for bitcoin in January.

This has seen major investment firms enter the crypto market for the first time, while also buoying sentiment for retail investors.

“The BTC Spot ETFs continue to exhibit strong momentum, with a cumulative net inflow of approximately $1.7 billion recorded last week, bringing the total net inflow since inception to about $7.4 billion,” noted Matteo Greco, a research analyst at fintech firm Fineqia International.

“Similarly, trading volume surged on centralised digital assets exchanges, reaching a cumulative trading volume of $73.4 billion for the week. This represents an 80 per cent increase from the previous week’s volume of $40.7 billion and marks the highest weekly trading volume recorded since May 2022.”

Other major cryptocurrencies have also seen considerable gains in recent days, with Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) all rising by more than 15 per cent since the start of March.

The biggest price surges have come from so-called meme coins, which have once again exploded in popularity. Both Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) are up by more than 100 per cent over the last week.

The price momentum has pushed the overall crypto market cap above $2.5 trillion, with bitcoin commanding a 53 per cent share.

With a market cap of $1.31 trillion, bitcoin now rivals that of the $1.36 trillion market cap of silver.