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Bitcoin:
The cryptocurrency has plummeted from $ 42,000 to a weekly low of under $ 34,000.
Burden profit taking
Photo: Jens Kalaene / dpa
The record hunt for the digital currency Bitcoin has taken a damper.
The price of the cryptocurrency fell on Monday night on the Luxembourg trading platform Bitstamp to 33,440 US dollars.
On Saturday, Bitcoin had hit a record high of $ 42,100.
The price slide of around 20 percent ensured that the crypto currency temporarily fell to its lowest level in a week after its steep rise.
In addition to the rising dollar, according to market observers, the rising yields on US government bonds also act as an opportunity to take profits on Bitcoin and sell them.
The crisis currency gold had also reacted with losses to the recent rise in the dollar - but the losses for gold were significantly smaller.
According to the US investment bank JP Morgan, numerous investors are switching from gold to Bitcoin - in parallel to the steep rise in Bitcoin, JP Morgan had announced a price target of around 150,000 US dollars in the first week of January.
But the upper price limit for Bitcoin is limited - one of the limiting factors is the extremely high energy consumption of Bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin's recent soaring is still unparalleled.
In March of last year, Bitcoin temporarily fell below the $ 4,000 mark - and has increased more than tenfold since that Corona low.
Since mid-December alone, i.e. in just over three weeks, the price has almost doubled despite the recent setback.
Over the year, the plus amounts to more than 300 percent.
Hardly any other form of investment currently has such drastic price increases to offer.
However, critics warn against exaggerations and a bubble, since such extreme price increases are rarely sustainable.
Bitcoin is the oldest and by far the best-known digital currency.
Experts had recently estimated the market capitalization to be around $ 560 billion.
For the latest soaring, however, the market repeatedly cites that the digital currency has recently moved more into the focus of large financial investors and is in greater demand.
However, experts also warn of the extreme price fluctuations that can be observed time and again with Bitcoin.
The value of the cryptocurrency more than quadrupled in the past year 2020.
Doubts about dollars and euros - does Bitcoin offer protection against inflation?
Bitcoin is also being boosted by the fact that more and more professional investors are interested in cryptocurrencies.
The interest of professional investors is often considered to be long-term, which could stabilize the very volatile Bitcoin price.
Interest in digital currencies is also being increased by the corona pandemic and the associated sharp rise in national debt.
For this reason, some investors fear rising inflation in the medium to long term, which they want to hedge against with alternative investments.
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The corona pandemic and the numerous rescue programs of the global central banks are causing a flood of money and thus also strengthening interest in the alternative currency Bitcoin: Due to the extremely loose monetary policy of many central banks and the immense state aid, some investors are likely to be critical of traditional currencies see confirmed.
Whether the new types of digital currencies offer sustainable protection against high inflation rates is doubtful due to their high exchange rate fluctuations.
At least Bitcoin has built in a kind of inflation protection: The amount of Bitcoin that can be "mined" by providing computing power in the blockchain is limited to 21 million units from the outset.
The digital currency has a fixed upper limit of 21 million units in its code and a mathematically predetermined monetary policy through "halving": In this point there is a significant difference to currencies such as euros or dollars, which can theoretically be printed in infinite quantities.
la / mmo