Bitcoin, the first and largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has just set a new all-time high above $125,000 to the excitement of the crypto community.
Bitcoin climbed to as high as $125,750 on Sunday on Coinbase, surpassing its previous record set Aug. 14, boosted by an uptick in U.S. equities and renewed inflows into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. A broader risk rally around the recent government shutdown also buoyed the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
Adding to the bullish sentiment is Bitcoin’s historical outperformance in the month of October, referred to as “Uptober” in crypto parlance. Bitcoin has finished higher in 9 of the past 10 Octobers.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up 1.96% in the last 24 hours to $124,686, with a current market capitalization of $2.48 trillion.
Bitcoin is up more than 30% this year, with Standard Chartered predicting a high of $135,000 next.
Email that began it all
As Bitcoin sets a new all-time high, the crypto community remembers the email that began it all, with the Bitcoin white paper set to clock 17 years this month.
On Oct. 31, 2008, an email from Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, was sent to a mailing list of cryptography enthusiasts with the subject line, “Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper.” The brief email described a new peer-to-peer digital currency system, which laid the basis of the Bitcoin network.
The Bitcoin white paper, which describes the design and functionality of the Bitcoin network, was released Oct. 31, 2008, and the cryptocurrency’s first block was mined Jan. 3, 2009.