By Medha Singh, Ankur Banerjee and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
LONDON/SINGAPORE/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Bitcoin rose to a fresh record high just shy of $95,000 after a report that Donald Trump's social media company was in talks to buy crypto trading firm Bakkt boosted expectations of a crypto-friendly regime under his incoming administration.
Bitcoin, the world's biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, has more than doubled this year. It was last at $93,709, up 1.6%, after hitting an all-time peak of $94,982.37.
The Financial Times said Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates Truth Social, is close to an all-stock acquisition of Bakkt, which is backed by NYSE-owner Intercontinental Exchange.
Bitcoin has soared more than 40% since the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, as traders bet that Trump's stated commitment to support cryptocurrencies would lead to a less restrictive regulatory environment, lifting the sector overall.
"The rise of bitcoin over the past 15 years is due to an innovation that cannot be recreated: decentralized electronic cash," wrote Nikhil Bhatia, founder of The Bitcoin layer, a research provider analyzing bitcoin through a global macroeconomic lens, in emailed comments.
"The term 'digital gold' best describes this digital asset that has an algorithmically limited supply function. If bitcoin were to reach the market size of gold ($17 trillion), it would imply a price of around $800,000 for 1 BTC," said Bhatia, who is also an adjunct professor of finance at USC Marshall School of Business.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported Trump was meeting privately with the crypto exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) chief executive officer Brian Armstrong, further aiding sentiment.
OPTIONS TRADING
Also lifting the outlook for the crypto sector was the strong debut on Tuesday of options trading for BlackRock (NYSE:BLK)'s spot bitcoin ETF on the Nasdaq, with a bullish call-to-put ratio of 4.4:1, according to QCP Capital. It tallied nearly $1.9 billion in notional exposure with 354,000 contracts traded, according to James Seyffart, Bloomberg's ETF research analyst.
"We expect these options to be popular and, in turn, may positively influence trading volumes of these ETPs (exchange traded products) as the underlying," said Kenneth Worthington, analyst at J.P. Morgan.
The growing excitement has taken the global cryptocurrency market's value above $3 trillion to a record high, based on analytics and data aggregator CoinGecko.
U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded products have attracted about $4.2 billion in inflows since Trump's election victory, about 15% of the total inflows since the products were launched on U.S. stock exchanges in January.
Chris Weston, head of research at Australian online broker Pepperstone, said there is real underlying buying pressure for bitcoin, and "another kick higher should bring in a fresh chase from those who like to buy what's strong".