Bitcoin price news live: Latest updates as BTC soars after Elon Musk tweet

Dogecoin has shot up more than 15 per cent following Musk’s comments about his crypto holdings, which he followed up with a succession of tweets specifically about the meme-inspired crypto.

He described it as “the people’s crypto”, revealing that “lots of people” on the production lines at Tesla and SpaceX own Doge. He also offered advice on how to improve dogecoin and make it more suitable for use as a mainstream form of payment.

“What matters imo is lowering fees, decreasing block time and increasing block size,” he said. “A single layer network with exchanges as de facto layer 2 seems like the simplest solution for a medium of exchange.”

Musk’s exact dogecoin holdings are unknown, though he previously said his crypto stash was the only thing of “significant value” that he owns, beyond SpaceX and Tesla stock. He is currently the wealthiest person on the planet, with a net worth in excess of $250 billion. Jeff Bezos, his closest rival, is worth less than $200bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

You can read the full story about how Elon Musk became fascinated with dogecoin right here.

Elon Musk has confirmed his personal crypto portfolio includes bitcoin, Ethereum (ether) and dogecoin – but no Shiba Inu or Floki Inu.

“Out of curiosity, I acquired some ascii hash strings called ‘Bitcoin, Ethereum and Doge’. That’s it,” he tweeted. “As I’ve said before, don’t bet the farm on crypto! True value is building products and providing services to your fellow human beings, not money in any form.”

As the CEO of Tesla, Musk became the most high-profile executive to invest company cash reserves into BTC earlier this year, buying $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency. The electric car maker has benefitted massively from the price rally, with its investment nearly doubling over the last few months.

As crypto trades down, stocks are up. Here’s the latest from AP:

Shares were mostly higher in Europe on Friday after a mixed session in Asia. 

Benchmarks rose in Paris, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Shares fell in Shanghai and Seoul. 

An official newspaper, the Securities Times, and other state media said China Evergrande Group made an overdue bond payment on Friday. 

Evergrande wired $83.5 million to account for a bond payment that was due Sept. 23, the reports said. The company’s Hong Kong-traded shares gained 4.3%.

The property developer’s struggle to reduce its 2 trillion yuan ($310 billion) of debt to comply with tighter official curbs on borrowing has prompted fears a default might trigger a financial crisis. 

The news of the payment followed Evergrande’s announcement a day earlier that it was running into difficulties selling assets to alleviate its liquidity crisis and that a plan to sell its property services arm had fallen through. 

Germany’s DAX gained 0.4% to 15,535.16. In Paris, the CAC 40 jumped 1.1% to 6,759.46, while Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.4% to 7,220.57. The future for the S&P 500 was nearly unchanged while the future for the Dow industrials gained less than 0.1%. 

On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose 0.3% to 4,549.78, its seventh straight gain. That eclipsed the record high it set on Sept. 2. It is on pace for its third straight weekly gain. 

The Dow slipped less than 0.1%, to 35,603.08. It is just below its all-time high set on Aug. 16. The Nasdaq gained 0.6% to 15,215.70, while the Russell 2000 rose 0.3%, to 2,296.18.

It’s a red day in the cryptocurrency market – rare over the last few weeks. Bitcoin is down 1.9 per cent, and the other coins that had benefited from bitcoin’s rally such as Cardano and Ethereum are down too.

Solana is the standout. It’s up more than 10 per cent today, taking up almost 30 per cent this week.

But overall it’s negative. The market is down 4.4 per cent over the last day, according to CoinMarketCap, and the amount being traded has dropped by almost 17 per cent.

After the astonishing price gains bitcoin has seen over the last few weeks, the question is whether it can maintain this momentum.

We’ve reached out to several cryptocurrency experts to hear their thoughts on where the market goes from here, with some speculating that the latest all-time high could be eclipsed before the end of the year. Comparisons were even drawn to the first gold ETF in 2004, when the market cap of the precious metal was roughly the same as bitcoin’s today. It has since risen 11-fold.

You can read the full story here.

The price of bitcoin has slid to below $63,000, having peaked earlier today at close to $67,000.

The flash crash comes amid warnings that the market was overbought during the launch of the first ever bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund earlier this week.

Crypto analyst and author Glen Goodman said that there could be a short-term dip due to over-leveraged traders buying bitcoin with funds borrowed at high interest rates.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has revealed that he regrets not investing more money in bitcoin following its latest price record.

The billionaire venture capitalist, who was one of the earliest investors in Facebook, told Bloomberg that he should follow fellow PayPal founder Elon Musk’s lead by buying a significant amount of the cryptocurrency and holding it for the long term.

“You’re supposed to just buy bitcoin,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been underinvested in it… I think the answers are still to go long.”

He also warned that bitcoin’s latest rally is a major concern for the traditional financial system, saying that BTC’s gains “surely tells us that we are at a complete bankruptcy moment for the central banks”.

Bitcoin’s record-breaking price rally has pushed its market cap ahead of the Swiss Franc, making it the world’s 13th most valuable currency.

Data from CoinMarketCap also ranks Ethereum (ether) in the top 25 fiat currencies, just below the Swedish Krona.

With a market cap in excess of $1.2 trillion, bitcoin is also worth more than some of the world’s most valuable companies, including Facebook and Tesla. The overall crypto market is now worth more than Apple – the world’s most valuable company – at more than $2.5 trillion.

Read the full story here.

It’s been a massive 24 hours for the cryptocurrency market, with several other leading altcoins looking to follow bitcoin’s all-time high with a record-breaking price run of their own.

Ethereum is now less than $100 from its ATH, while Solana is also fast approaching its own with gains of more than 20 per cent since this time yesterday.

All of the action has pushed the overall crypto market above its previous record, breaking above $2.6 trillion for the first time in its history this morning.