Tuesday 09 February 2021 8:57 am | Updated: Tuesday 09 February 2021 9:39 am

Bitcoin pushes past $48,000 to new record high

By the time you read this, Bitcoin will have completed its 4th Halving. The issuance rate of Bitcoin is designed to drop by half every 210,000 blocks, roughly every 4 years. This increases Bitcoin’s scarcity and makes it harder to mine. However, no developers press a deploy button, and there is no big announcement at a tech conference – the code just executes. The last Halving will occur around the year 2140 when the last of 21 million Bitcoin is mined.

Bitcoin is extending its gain this morning, hitting a new record high of $48,216 during late afternoon trading in Asia.

The cryptocurrency was driven to fresh record highs overnight – it traded above $47,000 late last night UK time – on the news that Elon Musk’s Tesla bought $1.5bn worth of the cryptocurrency.

In the same announcement, the electric vehicle manufacturer revealed that it intends to accept the digital currency as a method of payment too.

“One of the criticisms of Bitcoin is that far too few vendors accept it as legal tender but as more well-known names accept it, that should help bring it a step further to becoming more mainstream,” commented David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets UK.

“Four months ago, PayPal announced it would facilitate Bitcoin payments, which gave the cryptocurrency a shot in the arm,” he told City A.M. this morning.