What influences cryptocurrency values?

What influences cryptocurrency values?

Those in the crypto world will be familiar with the blithely confident expression, “number go up”. Use of the phrase in the digital asset space dates back about four years, according to David Gerard, an author and journalist.

While the term was in circulation elsewhere before the 2009 creation of bitcoin, let alone the more recent boom, it points to a fundamental question at the heart of a $2tn-plus industry: what, and who, influences the value of crypto?

Ask diehard believers why bitcoin was priced at $68,000 earlier this month, up from less than $30,000 at the start of the year, and their answer may be that it is just down to the market understanding its true value.

Certainly, financial institutions have made efforts to appear more crypto-friendly over the past year. Payment companies such as Mastercard and Visa are among those that have run experiments with digital currencies.

In politics, cryptocurrency advocates lauded the decision by El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, to make bitcoin legal tender in September. Then New York’s incoming mayor, Eric Adams, announced this month that he wanted his first pay cheque in bitcoin.

But critics say this does not necessarily translate into a healthy industry. “Bitcoin markets are hugely