Bitcoin on Wednesday climbed back above $96,000, recovering slightly from a pullback this week that knocked it from record levels.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by nearly 6% at $96,676.70, according to Coin Metrics, while ether jumped more than 9% to $3,636.46. The broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, gained 7%.
Although bitcoin is widely viewed as a store of value and a digital alternative to gold, the cryptocurrency often trades in tandem with the stock market. On Wednesday, however, it decoupled with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which was lower by 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 dropped as well.
Coinbase was up more than 6% as bitcoin lifted it along with other crypto stocks. Robinhood, which offers crypto trading and is viewed as a beneficiary of a more crypto-friendly environment in the incoming Trump administration, gained 3%. MicroStrategy, which trades as a proxy for bitcoin, advanced 9%.
Bitcoin has been regularly hitting records since the Nov. 5 presidential election, up about 38% in that time. On Friday, it rose as high as $99,849.99 before testing the $90,000 support level this week.
"The bitcoin bull market has legs," Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital, said in a report Wednesday. "There will be corrections and hiccups, which is normal. There could even some twilight regulatory or law enforcement actions from the outgoing Biden administration that jitter markets. But a combination of increasing institutional, corporate, and potentially nation-state adoption, a new U.S. administration that is shaping up to be extremely pro-bitcoin, and solid positioning and network data all point to higher over the near and medium term."
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Fairlead Strategies' Katie Stockton told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday that, at current levels, bitcoin investors are in "unchartered territory in terms of where there's resistance — which, of course, there is none." Meanwhile, support is around $74,000. Bitcoin reached $92,000 for the first time ever just two weeks ago, on Nov. 13.
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"Bitcoin does tend to stair step both to the downside and to the upside, meaning that it sees these very sharp runups and then consolidates," she said. "People should … be willing to give bitcoin, and the cryptocurrencies in general, more room because of the volatility there and also because of the long-term potential."
Bitcoin is up 126% for the year and is still widely expected to reach the $100,000 milestone before the year is over. Ether, the outperformer since the election, is trailing bitcoin on a year-to-date basis with a 59% gain.