[Bitcoin Now] Rally Again... Will It Hit This Year's Highest Point?

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Jung-yoon] The price of the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin has recovered to the level seen at the beginning of this year.

According to the global cryptocurrency market tracking site CoinMarketCap, as of 9 a.m. on the 29th, the price of Bitcoin rose 1.17% from the previous day to $47,274 (approximately 57.76 million KRW). According to CoinMarketCap, this is the first time since January 3rd this year that Bitcoin's price has exceeded $47,200. At 9 a.m. on the same day, the price aggregated by the domestic cryptocurrency exchange Upbit was 57.22 million KRW, up 0.54% (305,000 KRW) from the previous day.

The price of Bitcoin showed an upward trend amid positive news, including reports that the Luna Foundation, which issued the cryptocurrency Terra, made large-scale purchases. On the 28th (local time), Bloomberg reported that since the end of January this year, the Luna Foundation has purchased more than $1 billion (approximately 1.2211 trillion KRW) worth of Bitcoin. It also reported that the foundation bought about $135 million worth the day before. Earlier, Do Kwon, co-founder of Terra and CEO of Terraform Labs, said in an interview with Bloomberg, "The reason we are particularly interested in Bitcoin is that it is the most powerful digital reserve asset." Cryptocurrency specialized media CoinDesk also reported that the Luna Foundation purchased $1.3 billion worth of Bitcoin over the past six days.

Before the Luna Foundation's large-scale buying, news that Russia might adopt Bitcoin as a payment method for oil and natural gas transactions led to the rise in Bitcoin prices. When this news was reported on the 24th, Bitcoin prices surged by about 5% at one point.

Ethereum, the leading altcoin, is also showing an upward trend. As of 9:26 a.m. on the same day, the price of Ethereum was $3,380 (approximately 4.12 million KRW), up 2.98% from the previous day. This is the highest price since January 13th.

The rise in Ethereum is also influenced by expectations that the Ethereum 2.0 update will proceed as scheduled at the end of June. This update involves transitioning from the existing Proof of Work (PoW) mining method, which processes computations to mine cryptocurrency, to the Proof of Stake (PoS) method, where holders receive a certain proportion of rewards. The PoW method has been criticized for causing environmental pollution. Additionally, once the update is completed, the network transaction processing speed is theoretically expected to increase from 15 transactions per second to 2,000 transactions per second.