Bitcoin hit a new high of nearly $45,000 Monday, shooting up more than 45% from the beginning of the year.
Other digital currencies — with names like Terra and Solana — also rose sharply in value.
Even Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that began as a joke with a perpetually surprised Shiba Inu dog for its symbol, has soared almost 1,000% over the last week to set a record.
The rally is a moment of euphoria for the thousands of different versions of digital money, which years ago were dismissed as little more than online Beanie Babies caught in a speculative bubble. While cryptocurrencies often rise and fall together, the latest surge stands out for its magnitude — for the first time, the value of all cryptocurrencies skyrocketed above $1 trillion during the last month — as well as the number of people who are using the digital tokens for practical purposes and the major players who are getting involved.
On Monday, the ostensible reason for the rally was an announcement from Tesla, the electric car company run by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person. Tesla said that it had bought $1.5 billion of Bitcoin and would begin accepting bitcoin payments, setting off a frenzy of interest.
But the underlying momentum for a spike has been slowly building for about a year. Over that period, PayPal has joined other consumer apps that allow their users to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies. Some of the biggest hedge fund operators in the world — like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller — have also put money into the new market.
“It’s just a sea change in sentiment,” said Meltem Demirors, the chief strategy officer at Microshares, a cryptocurrency asset manager. “We went from being mocked and ridiculed to having the richest man in the world talking about it.”