Bitcoin price through the roof as celebrities jump on the crypto bandwagon
Bitcoin hit a new record high of $51,300 on Wednesday, up 4.7 per cent in a day.
The rise tops off a week of enthusiasm for the cryptocurrency, which saw its price surge above $50k for the first time on Tuesday.
Bitcoin has risen 900 per cent since March of last year and many famous backers have jumped on the bandwagon.
Elon Musk
Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla recently announced that it had bought $1.5bn of bitcoin, prompting a 20 per cent surge in the cryptocurrency on the day it became public knowledge.
Tesla also said it hopes to begin accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment soon.
Jack Dorsey
The Twitter founder is a Bitcoin enthusiast and believes the internet will eventually have its own currency.
His Square Inc company said in October that it had bought around 4.709 bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $50m.
Twitter said in February it had considered holding Bitcoin but had not yet decided.
Jay-Z
The US hip hop star has launched a Bitcoin development fund with Jack Dorsey, focusing on its adoption in India and Africa.
Jay-Z and Dorsey will invest 500 BTC, currently worth around $24.5m, in the project.
The Winklevoss twins
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, best known for their lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook, were early Bitcoin investors.
They first put money into the cryptocurrency in 2012 and established exchange platform Gemini three years later.
Stanley Druckenmiller
The billionaire investor said in a television interview in November 2020 that he had put money into Bitcoin.
He believes it could outperform gold as store of value.
PayPal
The payment giant caused a surge in October 2020 when it said customers could buy, sell and hold Bitcoin using its online wallets.
Mayor Francis Suarez
Miami’s mayor has been busy leading the Bitcoin charge by proposing that workers are paid and taxes are collected in Bitcoin.
Suarez wants to allow Miami’s workers to choose to receive all or a portion of their pay in the cryptocurrency.
Anthony Scaramucci
Investment manager Scaramucci, who had a brief stint at the White House as head of communications for Donald Trump, launched a Bitcoin fund at the start of this year.