Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, topped US$34,000, just weeks after passing another major milestone.
The currency gained as much as 7.8 percent to US$34,182.75, before slipping to about US$33,970 as of 3:05pm yesterday in Singapore. It advanced almost 50 percent last month, when it breached US$20,000 for the first time.
The latest gains top an eye-popping rally for the controversial digital asset, which rebounded sharply after a severe crash in March last year that saw it lose 25 percent amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: Reuters
The currency “will be on the road to US$50,000 probably in the first quarter of 2021,” said Antoni Trenchev, managing partner and cofounder of Nexo in London, which bills itself as the world’s biggest cryptocurrency lender.
Institutional investors returning to their desks this week will likely boost prices further after retail buying over the holidays, he said.
Bitcoin has increasingly been “embraced in more global investment portfolios as holders expand beyond tech geeks and speculators,” Bloomberg Intelligence commodity strategist Mike McGlone wrote in a note last month.
Proponents of the currency have also seized on the narrative that the coin could act as a store of wealth amid supposed rampant money printing by central banks, even as inflation remains mostly muted.
Bitcoin should eventually climb to about US$400,000, Guggenheim Investments chief investment officer Scott Minerd told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Dec. 16 last year.
Still, there are reasons to be cautious, partly because cryptocurrencies remains a thinly traded market.
Bitcoin slumped as much as 14 percent on Nov. 26 amid warnings that the asset class was overdue for a correction. A big run-up in price in 2017 was followed by an 83 percent rout that lasted a year.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
A TAIWAN DEAL: TSMC is in early talks to fully operate Intel’s US semiconductor factories in a deal first raised by Trump officials, but Intel’s interest is uncertain Broadcom Inc has had informal talks with its advisers about making a bid for Intel Corp’s chip-design and marketing business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Nothing has been submitted to Intel and Broadcom could decide not to pursue a deal, according to the Journal. Bloomberg News earlier reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is in early talks for a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at the request of officials at US President Donald Trump’s administration, as the president looks to boost US manufacturing and maintain the country’s leadership in critical technologies. Trump officials raised the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
RSS