Bitcoin powers to new high as Tesla’s investment takes it mainstream
BITCOIN was fast approaching the $50 000 mark on Tuesday as the afterglow of Elon Musk-led Tesla’s investment in the cryptocurrency had investors reckoning it may become a mainstream asset class for both corporations and money managers.
The most popular cryptocurrency has gained 1,150% from March 2020 lows as institutional investors search for alternative wealth stores and retail traders ride the wave. It traded at a few hundred dollars only five years back.
On Monday, it leapt 20% after Tesla announced it had a $1.5 billion investment and that it would eventually take the cryptocurrency as payment for its cars.
That was its largest daily rise in more than three years. The price of one Bitcoin climbed to a peak of $48.216 – almost enough to buy one of the best-selling Tesla vehicles, Tesla Model Y SUV. Rival cryptocurrency Ethereum struck a record high of $1784.85 on Tuesday.
Musk, a supporter of cryptocurrencies, foresees accepting the currency as a payment for Tesla cars and analysts reckon this is a larger shift as companies and big investment houses follow small traders into the asset. “Bitcoin is definitely capturing investors’ attention – I get more and more questions about it,” said Marija Vertimane, senior strategist at State Street Global Markets. “From a practical point of view, using Bitcoin to buy anything – Tesla cars – would be still extremely difficult given its excessive volatility.”
Bitcoin’s volatility has been a hindrance for some serious investors and a sticking point in using it for transactions. What’s more, with Bitcoin’s value tripling in the past three months, analysts raised questions over how its volatility would affect someone buying a Tesla car in Bitcoin.
For example, if someone bought a Tesla Model 3 for one Bitcoin on Sunday – when it traded for $38000 – the same car could be bought for just 0.8 bitcoin on Tuesday, when the cryptocurrency traded at $46413.
Billionaire Musk has long been a cryptocurrency fan but Tesla’s hard currency investment came as a surprise
In the ongoing digital wave, central bankers and regulators, particularly in China, are also starting to embrace issuing their own digital currencies for everyday use, in a major break from the conventional workings of global finance.
THE death of Judge Kenneth Mthiyane and the passing on of his dear wife Phyllis just days before is for me a devastating loss of two of my very favourite people.
My friendship and collegiality with “KK” (as he was affectionately known ) on the Bench has endured from when he joined the legal profession at a time when as attorneys we were pre-occupied with providing legal assistance to the victims of apartheid South Africa’s draconian security legislation.
It has been a friendship which has endured from the early Seventies up to and beyond our respective retirements from the Bench in about the mid-2000s.
We were both appointed to full-time appointments to the KZN Bench in 1997 which marked the beginning of almost daily interaction until he left to join the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.
We sat together on many a Full Bench Appeal in the KZN Division and as judges of the Electoral Court.
In both instances, the scribing of judgments was never an issue for either of us, and it remains for me quite remarkable how singularly alike we were in our approach to the law and our assessments of the facts.
There is one particular aspect of the criminal law on which we were both in complete agreement, and that was that insofar as there was a suitable alternative to imprisonment our attitude was nearly always to try as best we could to avoid incarceration.
We enjoyed a wonderful relationship as judges. Ken was a great legal brain, as hard-working and thorough as any judge it has been my pleasure to have known and worked with. A great loss to the judiciary, the nation and the family he leaves behind.
Go well my friend. Rest in peace with your loving wife Phyllis at your side, as you would no doubt have wished. | JUDGE THUMBA PILLAY Durban