Bitcoin officially at a new all-time high – BitcoinBlog.de – the blog for Bitcoin and other virtual currencies

Now Bitcoin has also broken its previous dollar all-time high. The market is moving along, but almost all major cryptocurrencies are still lagging behind. The consequences of the all-time high, however, are being felt – from the big miners to the US Central Bank.

The Bitcoin price has now broken its all-time high in dollars, making it official: Bitcoin, regardless of currency, has never been worth as much as it is today!

Yesterday the price broke through the previous all-time high of around $68,900 (from November 10, 2021) to rise – initially only tentatively, almost timidly – to 69,500 or 69,800. But early today it broke out even further, reaching a high of $72,300, cementing the all-time high.

Bitcoin’s market capitalization rose to more than $1.4 billion, already far eclipsing the previous record of around $1.2 billion. Not only is each Bitcoin worth more than it was in November 2021 – there are also significantly more.

As usual, Bitcoin is dragging the entire market with it. “Numbers Go Up,” everywhere. The total market capitalization is at a remarkably high level of a good $2.7 trillion, but it was briefly higher at more than $2.9 trillion in November 2021.

Top coins in particular such as Ethereum, Cardano, Binance Smart Chain, Ripple (XRP) and Solana are still away from their all-time highs – a small distance for Ethereum, but quite a long way for Cardano, Solana and XRP.

Other coins, such as the AI ​​cryptocurrencies Fetch.ai or SingularityNET, have already eclipsed their old highs.

When it comes to meme coins like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu or Floki, the overall picture is a bit mixed – all coins have increased dramatically in value in the last few days and weeks: Floki, for example, has increased its value eightfold over the last 30 days, Shiba Inu almost tripled – But on the whole, this sector is still lagging behind its peak levels.

Classic payment coins such as Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash were also able to rise, but are still miles away from their former heights.

This leaves an overall picture in which, among the major coins, only Bitcoin has broken its previous all-time high. The fact that the total market capitalization is still close to its all-time high is probably due to the fact that even more coins have flowed onto the market and stablecoins have grown strongly.

With a market capitalization of around $1.4 trillion, Bitcoin has now landed at around 10 percent of gold’s market capitalization. In order to catch up with the precious metal, the Bitcoin price would have to rise to around $700,000.

When sorting commodities and companies by market capitalization in this global ranking, Bitcoin is in eighth place – just ahead of silver at $1.38 trillion – and behind Google, Amazon, Saudi Aramco, Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft. European companies are far behind in this list; You have to look for German companies in particular that have even a fraction of the market capitalization of Bitcoin.

Where the current rally will take the Bitcoin price is a question of wild and often baseless speculation that oscillates somewhere between reading coffee grounds and wishful thinking. Sometimes it is tipped for a strong $300,000, then Cathie Wood from Ark Invest even thinks that Bitcoin would rise to a million dollars before 2030. And if you consult the almost scary rainbow chart, prices of $150,000 to $300,000 are becoming almost unavoidable over the course of 2025.

But regardless of where the course goes, the universal “Numbers Go Up” is already having exciting consequences. Perhaps the most interesting is a comment from analyst Marko Kolanovic from the major bank JPMorgan: “The price of Bitcoin suggests that ‘foam’ is already accumulating in risky financial instruments.” The foam is, so to speak, the precursor to the bubble. This foam that has accumulated in Bitcoin could, Kolanovic speculates, lead to the US Federal Reserve suspending its planned interest rate cuts. To put it a little exaggeratedly, Bitcoin becomes an indicator of how stable the dollar is. This could be an important step on the way to a universal computing unit.

The rally is also clearly noticeable among Bitcoin miners. As Business Insider reports, they are currently spending “billions of dollars” on equipment and energy contracts, which they are signing at a record pace. Since the next halving is coming up soon, which will halve the output of new Bitcoins per block to 3.125 BTC in mid-April, there is currently still a race to get hold of the last blocks with 6.25 BTC.

With an estimated energy consumption of 19.76 gigawatts (according to Cambridge), Bitcoin miners’ electricity consumption is at an all-time high. This corresponds, writes Business Insider, to the energy of 3.8 million households in Texas. Over the last month alone, mining is estimated to have consumed 13.6 terawatt hours of energy, which – if things continue like this – could well eclipse the annual consumption of 2023.

At current consumption, Bitcoin will consume around 173 terawatt hours of energy per year. This would put Bitcoin slightly above Egypt and below South Africa; Germany consumed almost 500 terawatt hours last year.

Bitcoin’s electricity consumption is a direct and almost mandatory derivation of the value of new blocks. If Bitcoin continues to rise – as many expect to more than $100,000 or even more than $300,000 – the network’s power consumption will grow proportionally. After all, the approaching halving will offset the increase in price. During the last halving in May 2020, electricity consumption fell by 30 to 40 percent. This can also be expected in April.