The cryptocurrency market surpassed $ 3 trillion on Monday for the first time in its history, between increased appetite for traditional finance and runaway investors, baited by dizzying increases and worried about inflation.
As sometimes in this sector, analysts were struggling to find an explanation for the marked rise in prices on Monday.
“The cryptocurrency market is swelling at an astounding speed”, explains to AFP Ipek Ozkardeskaya, market analyst at SwissQuote, who believes that there is “a part of speculation and a part of reality”.
Since the end of October, the American markets have had access to an index product (ETF) backed by bitcoin, which allows investors to bet on the rise of the first cryptocurrency without leaving Wall Street.
Moreover, unlike the dollar or the euro, the number of bitcoins has been set at 21 million, which are issued gradually, a rule that cannot be changed without controlling the entire decentralized network.
Some investors believe that cryptocurrencies are therefore a way to protect against inflation, which is rising in North America and Europe.
“It is an extremely risky strategy given how volatile the cryptocurrency is and that its value can suffer from pressure from regulators, or even from comments on social networks”, warns in a note Susannah Streeter, market analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown .
Bitcoin (+ 5% to $ 66,035) neared its all-time high while ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, gained 2% to $ 4,727, after soaring earlier to a new peak at $ 4,768.
Bitcoin and ethereum represent more than 40% and just under 20% of the market, respectively, and volatility is further exacerbated for smaller cryptocurrencies.
The Shiba Inu, a cryptoasset created to compete with the Dogecoin, itself based on a joke, had reached a theoretical size of $ 40 billion by the end of October, becoming the tenth largest cryptocurrency. But in a matter of days, nearly $ 10 billion evaporated.
“It is unlikely that today’s champions will be tomorrow’s survivors,” said Ms. Ozkardeskaya, who fears “a bubble of the same type as that of the Internet” in the 2000s.