Bitcoin touched its highest level since mid-June after Donald Trump expanded his pro-crypto agenda and as expectations for US Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts bolstered investor sentiment.
The largest digital asset rose as much as 2.6% on Monday and changed hands at $69,462 as of 11.40am in Singapore. Smaller tokens such as Ether, Solana and meme-crowd favourite Dogecoin also pushed higher.
Republican presidential nominee Trump pledged at a weekend conference to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower” if he returns to the White House following November’s election.
Trump also said that he will order the US government to refrain from selling crypto seized in criminal cases and instead use the tokens as the basis for what he called a strategic Bitcoin stockpile.
The former president’s speech at the Bitcoin event in Nashville cemented the original cryptocurrency “as a key election trade”, Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group, wrote in a note.
Meanwhile the Fed meeting later this week is expected to lay the groundwork for the start of a rate-cutting cycle, a prospect that lifted the mood in markets.
Bitcoin is about $4,400 below a record of nearly $74,000 hit in March. Inflows into dedicated US exchange-traded funds have boosted the token this year.