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Surging prices, anticipation, and steady coin interest round out today’s headlines

Bitcoin Registers a New High of $23,776

The Bitcoin price on Dec 17 rallied to a new all-time high of $23,776, data from Coinbase shows. 

Accompanying the rally was a sharp increment in participation levels. According to Coinalyze, an analytics platform, the Bitcoin ecosystem registered a whopping $80 billion in futures trading volumes and $10 billion in the spot market. 

With the BTC/USD pair rising to new 2020 highs, $800 million short and long positions were liquidated. In the last two days, over $1 billion of shorts were liquidated.

$BTC yesterday, a summary:

– #Bitcoin made a new ATH, $23,776 ( Coinbase )
– HUGE trading volume: $80 billion on future markets, $10 billion on spot markets!
– $800 million got liquidated: both longs and shorts
– over the previous two days $1 billion shorts got liquidated pic.twitter.com/YIkVvY3KP3

— Coinalyze (@coinalyzetool) December 18, 2020

Meanwhile, the Binance trader leaderboard shows that leading traders were making upwards of $13.2 million. On average, in the top 10, Bitcoin futures traders on Binance were returning over $1.1 million daily ROI.

Guggenheim Partners CIO Scott Minerd is also predicting the BTC price to reach $400 million. He cites the Federal Reserve’s money printing, the fixed Bitcoin supply, and BTC’s relative valuation to gold. 

"Our fundamental work shows that Bitcoin should be worth about $400,000," says Guggenheim's Scott Minerd https://t.co/9QyOWyYAVA pic.twitter.com/uojQqaKPia

— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) December 16, 2020

Paul Tudor Jones has in the past said the over $400 billion Bitcoin market cap is “wrong” when compared to the $7 trillion and $100 trillion valuations of gold and equities, respectively.

Paul Tudor Jones today, "Bitcoin's $500 billion market cap is wrong in a world where equities have a $90 trillion and gold has $7 trillion"

— Blockfolio (@blockfolio) December 3, 2020

Coinbase Is Going Public, Files with the US SEC

The eight-year San Francisco-based exchange, Coinbase, has filed with the US SEC for an Initial Public Offering (IPO). 

The regulator is now reviewing its draft registration statement. Coinbase is one of the largest regulated cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. 

Analysts say this will be a watershed moment for cryptocurrency. It is a move that will legitimize the space. 

There has been no comment from the regulator. However, if Coinbase is denied, they may opt to offer their shares directly to the public.

Coinbase didn’t disclose further details like how the IPO is structured aside from disclosing that their announcement isn’t an offer to sell or solicit any security.