London, United Kingdom — Bitcoin burst past $100,000 for the first time on Thursday, taking the limelight away from stock markets that wavered as investors tracked political crises in France and South Korea.
Oil prices rose slightly after the OPEC cartel and its allies extended their supply cuts to avoid a sharp drop in prices in a global market awash with crude.
The dollar dropped against its main rivals while Wall Street’s main stock indexes wobbled at the open.
Bitcoin reached a high of $103,800.45 before dipping to just over $103,400.
Bitcoin is “stealing (the) stock market’s spotlight”, said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare.
The digital asset has now soared more than 50 percent since the election of Donald Trump, who has vowed to make the United States the “bitcoin and cryptocurrency capital of the world”.
“Bitcoin smashed through $100,000 as the Trump Trade powered on with force,” noted Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell
The historic level was broken after Trump picked crypto proponent Paul Atkins to take over as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the markets regulator.
“CONGRATULATIONS BITCOINERS!!! $100,000!!! YOU’RE WELCOME!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Atkins is founder of risk consultancy firm Patomak Global Partners, whose clients include companies in the banking, trading and cryptocurrency industries.
Atkins “is unlikely to be as anti-crypto as his predecessor Gary Gensler”, said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB trading platform.
“Thus, politics is driving bitcoin. We doubt that the rally will stop here,” she added.
Mixed markets
Stock markets struggled for direction.
In New York, the Dow was down in early deals while the tech-heavy Nasdaq and broad-based S&P 500 were flat.
Paris was up despite the historic no-confidence vote that ousted the government of French Prime Minister Michel Barnier.
“The French political crisis failed to knock European indices off course,” Coatsworth said.
Frankfurt was also in the green but London was flat.
On the corporate front, Vodafone shares rose around 1.6 percent in London after UK regulators approved its merger with Three, which will create Britain’s biggest mobile phone operator.
British energy major Shell shed one percent after it announced plans to merge its UK offshore oil and gas assets with those of Norway’s Equinor.
Most Asian stock markets finished higher but Seoul closed in the red.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol clung to power Thursday, his party announcing they will oppose an impeachment motion after his short-lived imposition of martial law stunned the world.
South Korea’s currency — which initially hit a two-year low when the crisis erupted — remained at around 1,415 won per dollar, slightly up from its levels before the martial law declaration late on Tuesday.
“The silver lining we think is that the swift reversal of the martial law underscores the resilience of South Korea’s institutions,” said analysts at BMI, a unit of Fitch Solutions.
“For now, we expect limited implications for the economy and financial markets as the Bank of Korea and the ministry of finance have responded swiftly by reassuring investors,” they added.