The price of bitcoin has hit a new all-time high, The Independent reports.
The cryptocurrency rose above $19,783 – the previous record it reached in December 2017.
The latest price high comes after a major surge over the last 72 hours, which saw bitcoin bounce back from a major crash last week to rise by more than $3,000 in just three days.
The new price high was recorded on the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI), though other exchanges and price trackers still remain a couple of hundred dollars away from the all-time high.
At the time of writing, bitcoin was trading at $19,432, according to CoinMarketCap – still a three-year high for the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin had been widely anticipated to hit a new all-time high before the end of the year, though the speed at which it arrived has come as some surprise.
Huge price surges are not unheard of for the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency, however many analysts had failed to predict such a sudden price acceleration.
Other major cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum (ether), Ripple (XRP) and bitcoin cash also experienced major gains on Monday, shooting up by 4-9 per cent.
Bitcoin has been boosted by a wave of institutional investment in 2020, which appears to have been spurred on by the coronavirus pandemic.
