Bitcoin hits all-time high of $19,857, extends year-to-date return to 177%

• Bitcoin hit a record high on Monday, surging above its peak reached in December 2017.
• The world's most popular cryptocurrency climbed as much as 8.7%, to $19,857.03, bringing its year-to-date gain to 177%.
• "The Bitcoin correction didn't last long, with the cryptocurrency having sights set on new highs once again," a senior market analyst at Oanda said.
• Rising inflation and increasingly negative views of modern monetary policy are forcing investors to look for alternative ways to preserve the value of their capital, the cofounder of Chainlink said.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Bitcoin reached an all-time high on Monday, breaking its intraday record set in December 2017.

The world's most popular cryptocurrency surged as much as 8.7%, to $19,857.03, bringing its year-to-date gain to 177%. Last week the cryptocurrency crashed by $3,000 through Thanksgiving after large-volume profit-taking dragged on prices.

"The Bitcoin correction didn't last long, with the cryptocurrency having sights set on new highs once again, with $20,000 the ultimate goal in the short-term," said Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst at Oanda. "A move into uncharted territory and the psychological boost that would come with a move like this could propel Bitcoin aggressively higher." Read more: Buy these 10 stocks set to soar and smash Wall Street's expectations in the recovery from COVID-19, RBC says

Cameron Winklevoss, a cofounder of the crypto exchange Gemini, said the token's potential to unseat gold as a store of value means its price could reach 25 times $19,000. "No other liquid asset in the universe can credibly offer this magnitude of asymmetric payoff in the next decade," he tweeted.

Sergey Nazarov, the cofounder of Chainlink, said he expected the price to eventually break $100,000 because the "digital gold" narrative seems to have normalized.

---

He said two factors would drive its price over $100,000.

For one, rising inflation and increasingly negative views of modern monetary policy are leading people and institutions to look for alternative ways to preserve the value of their capital, Nazarov said. And growing demand for yield and the rise of "decentralized finance," or "DeFi" — the fastest-growing sector in the blockchain industry — is accelerating its growth. "Quite simply, the risk-reward equation is starting to flip from traditional financial assets being yield-bearing, less risky, and reliable stores of wealth resistant to inflation over to Bitcoin and various cryptoassets being the sources of yield, increasingly less risk, and a reliable store of wealth," he said.

Read more: GOLDMAN SACHS: Buy these 16 stocks that are underestimated for now, but should crush expectations in 2021-22 on the way to at least 20% upside