This year’s crypto market rally continues to post impressive gains following a significant surge late Wednesday evening from the world’s largest digital asset.
Bitcoin breached the vaunted $100,000 at 9:45 pm ET, smashing through that level to land just above $103,000, CoinGecko data shows.
Over the last 24 hours, the native token of Bitcoin layer-2 Stacks (STX) experienced the largest uplift, rising 15% to $3, while The Sandbox (SAND) came in second—up 14% to $0.87.
Gunning off market fervor, the rally also saw a resurgence in long-time altcoins affiliated with Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Ethereum Classic (ETC) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) have extended their rally, hitting levels last seen in March and April, respectively. ETC has climbed 17% this week to $37, while BSV has gained 18%, reaching $84.30.
Given the historic milestone, investors are now wondering how far the rally has to run before President-elect Donald Trump steps back into the Whitehouse on January 20.
However, market analysts say the rally is just warming up.
“If we look at past market cycles, it still feels like we’re reasonably early in this bull market,” Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at eToro, told Decrypt.
Though Gilbert cautioned market participants to be mindful of “profit taking” along the way, encouraging them to be mindful that assets rarely rise in a straight line “forever.”
“Drawdowns for Bitcoin are par for the course, but it feels like it's going to take something big to slow down Bitcoin right now.”
Others, like Pav Hundal, lead analyst at Swyftx, agree.
“The market is still showing a lot of bidding activity,” Hundal told Decrypt. “Crypto exchange volumes hit new highs in November and order flows just keep pushing up. This is a straightforward forward momentum rally.”
Wednesday’s surge follows Trump’s pick of Paul Atkins, a former commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission, to lead the regulatory agency as its next Chairman.
“Crypto users will be enjoying the fact that Bitcoin pushed past $100,000 off the back of Atkins being nominated for Gary Gensler’s job as SEC chair,” Hunal added. “You couldn’t have scripted it.”
