Bitcoin tops $40,000 for the first time since June
Bitcoin boosted by Amazon's crypto plans
After dipping under $30,000 last week, Bitcoin rebounded and briefly surpassed $40,000 for the first time since June on Monday.
For the past couple of months, Bitcoin has been trading between $30,000 to just under $40,000. After hovering around this mark for the better part of June and July, speculators wondered whether the cryptocurrency was still dipping after correcting from its all-time high of $64,800 back on April 14, 2021.
At about 3 p.m. EDT Monday, the price of Bitcoin was at one point up as much as roughly 17% over the past 24 hours at $40,539. That also marked a 27% increase over the last week when prices bottomed out at around $29,500, according to Coindesk.
With the recent news that Amazon.com, Inc. is on the hunt for a cryptocurrency expert to manage its digital currency and blockchain strategy as the company moves toward accepting digital assets as payment, the crypto market writ large seems to be benefitting from the positive press and institutional investment.
Business Insider, which first flagged the job posting, also confirmed from Amazon that the e-commerce giant is seeking to accept cryptocurrency payments "as soon as possible."
As companies shift their focus on the technological and financial benefits that crypto offers, the risks are not to be ignored.
Tesla, Inc., which owns a large portion of Bitcoin, announced today that it was negatively impacted in the second quarter because its Bitcoin holdings dipped in value. Despite this, the company's holdings in cryptocurrency have paid off in the past. As recently as of March, Tesla said its $1.5 billion worth investment in Bitcoin was worth $2.48 billion, coming off of the Bitcoin price surge that took place in the first quarter of 2021.
Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
---|---|---|---|---|
TSLA | TESLA INC. | 338.59 | -13.97 | -3.96% |
AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 201.45 | +4.33 | +2.20% |
Other cryptocurrencies are trending upwards seemingly as a result of the increase in Bitcoin price. Ethereum hit a daily high of $2,418 at the same time as Bitcoin, at the time representing a daily increase of 12%. Other coins that had sizable increases are Chainlink, Polkadot, Polygon and Cardano.