Bitcoin climbed to new all-time high on Thursday, building on its previous record reached just a day earlier, as investors jumped into risk assets and liquidated short positions.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by more than 2% at $113,670.79. Earlier, it rose as high as $113,863.18. Earlier, it rose as high as $113,863.31.
Over the past 24 hours, $318 million in short liquidations have occurred across centralized exchanges, according to CoinGlass. When traders use leverage to short bitcoin and the cryptocurrency’s price rises, they buy bitcoin back from the market to close their positions, which pushes the price up and causes more positions to be liquidated.
Altcoins, or cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin, joined the rally for a second day after many investors had started to lose hope that they would show signs of life this year. Ether and the Solana token gained more than 2% each. Dogecoin and the token tied to Cardano advanced more than 5% each. XRP and litecoin rose 3%.
Bitcoin has traded in a tight range for several weeks despite billions of dollars flowing into bitcoin exchange traded funds, which has helped the price stay above the $100,000 level for more than 60 consecutive days. Public companies have also been on a bitcoin buying spree and outpaced bitcoin ETF inflows in the second quarter.
Bitcoin’s climb this week began on Wednesday, when investors returned to risk-on mode, driving the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite to a record close and giving a boost to cryptocurrencies.
Between big purchases from institutions and optimism on the regulatory front with Congress making progress on stablecoin legislation, investors were expecting bitcoin to push to new heights in the second half of the year.