Bitcoin hit a new all-time high. Here’s what to know about the crypto market

Cryptocurrency bitcoin hit a new all-time high Wednesday morning, soaring north of $109,800 per token briefly before slipping back to a bit over $107,000 later in the day, according to tracking by Coin Metrics.

The new peak surpasses bitcoin’s previous record of $109,300 set in January and is well ahead of recent lows of $74,000 to $76,000 in early April, driven primarily by investor uncertainty over emerging changes in U.S. trade tariff policy.

Crypto experts say investor optimism is now on the rise thanks to cooling international trade tensions and declining confidence in the stability of the U.S. dollar as the national debt continues to grow and the country’s credit worthiness slips.

“Bitcoin’s new high has been concocted by an array of favorable ingredients in the macro cauldron, namely softer U.S. inflation numbers, a de-escalation in the U.S.-China trade war and the Moody’s downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt, which has put the spotlight on alternative stores of value like bitcoin,” Antoni Trenchev, cofounder of crypto exchange Nexo, told CNBC.

Bitcoin’s new record pricing comes amid broad U.S. fiscal turbulence. Major stock indexes were down Wednesday, Treasury Bond yields continued to rise and the value of the U.S. dollar hit a two-week low with investors “grappling with elevated uncertainty around U.S. fiscal policy and the role of Treasuries and the dollar as portfolio diversifiers and safe havens,” Danske Bank analysts said in a note, per a report from the Wall Street Journal.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate advanced the GENIUS Act stablecoin legislation on a bipartisan vote, a move widely seen as a positive step for the cryptocurrency markets. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to underlying assets like the U.S. dollar.

Investment bank Standard Chartered estimated the rules could expand the stablecoin market from its current notional value of $240 billion to $2 trillion by the end of 2028, with most of the reserves that back stablecoins likely to be held in U.S. Treasuries, according to a report from Financial Times.

Also on Tuesday, Jamie Dimon, CEO of banking and investment giant JPMorgan Chase, said during a talk at an investors event that his firm will now let its clients buy bitcoin, even though he reaffirmed his personal skepticism over cryptocurrency as an investment vehicle. Dimon’s comments signal a growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies among legacy financial companies.

The Trump effect

Bitcoin’s value broke the $100,000 mark for the first time in early December and moved even higher later in the month before pricing eased a bit. The digital token ended 2024 up over 100% for the year, with about half that gain realized after President Donald Trump‘s election victory in early November.

While Trump is a past critic of cryptocurrencies and at one point warned that investments in the digital tokens were a “scam,” he has since pivoted to become a crypto proponent and made repeated campaign pledges to create a friendly space for the sector. Among his pro-crypto comments was a promise made during a speech last July at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville that, under his administration, “the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.”

Trump made good on that pledge, choosing Paul Atkins to head up the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins, who served as an SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008, is widely known as a strong supporter of the cryptocurrency market.

Trump highlighted Atkins’ stance on digital currencies in an announcement of the selection, posted on Truth Social last December.

“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations,” Trump wrote. “He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”

The cryptocurrency market has exploded since bitcoin made its public debut in 2009 and the current portfolio of digital tokens numbers in the tens of thousands. Market volatility has been a benchmark of those virtual currencies as regulators in the U.S. and around the world have struggled to assemble a framework that suits the decentralized currencies.