Bitcoin Surges Past $99K: Is This the Era of Crypto Aristocracy?

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In a scene reminiscent of the more flamboyant excesses of a 1920s Riviera casino—though with rather more laptop screens and significantly fewer croupiers—Bitcoin, that darling enfant terrible of the financial set, has soared to a delirious $99,434 on none other than the Coinbase exchange. Quite the coming-out party for a digital coin, if one enjoys such events. 🥂

The flagship cryptocurrency now looms less than a cocktail olive’s toss away from the mythical $100,000 mark, a feat unseen since the dark and cold days of February 7th—assuming, of course, that your idea of a good time in winter involves monitoring crypto charts. (To each their own degeneracy.)

And the reason for this social climbing among digits? Institutional types—those Wall Street peacocks—have been stampeding into BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), which, after seventeen straight days of inflows, has vacuumed up a neat $5 billion. One imagines the hedge fund managers congratulating themselves with Campari and quietly googling “how to mine Bitcoin” in their mahogany-panelled dens. As U.Today’s intrepid reporters pointed out, even Brown University has decided to trade in theology for cryptography, publicly disclosing a stake in IBIT. Oh, how the mighty lecture!

Meanwhile, retail investors have responded with something approaching studied indifference. As Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley—one suspects he has never owned a hoodie—drily notes, the Google search charts remain as flat as yesterday’s champagne. It appears that the common folk are content to observe from the sidelines while the institutional juggernauts jostle for spoils. How very old money of them. 🧐

This absence of retail frenzy is glaringly apparent when one surveys the sorry spectacle of alternative cryptocurrencies, floundering like junior aristocrats at their first debutante ball. Bitcoin’s dominance, on the other hand, is ballooning towards the fabled 70% mark, uncannily resembling that one guest at a party who insists on telling everyone about his trust fund. The market cap is marching crisply towards $2 trillion—just a touch behind Amazon, and with considerably less threat of missed package deliveries.

Not wishing to be outdone, the American states of New Hampshire and Arizona have enshrined Bitcoin reserves into law, leaving the rest of the union to frantically phone their respective parliaments. Legislative FOMO is, apparently, a bipartisan condition.

So, will this bullish revelry carry Bitcoin into record-breaking territory later this month, or will retail spectators continue to yawn politely and reach for their tea? The world watches, champagne flutes in hand, as this fin de siècle crypto drama savours another act. The stage, as always, belongs to Bitcoin—having last peaked at a theatrical $108,786 with all the subtlety of Gatsby at a garden party. 🍾

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2025-05-08 12:22