Bitcoin momentarily fell towards the week’s starting position on Friday, December 4, falling by 3 per cent in less than two hours and dipping below $19,000.

The cryptocurrency can nonetheless said to have enjoyed a bumper week. On Monday it broke the previous all-time high of $19,783 reached in 2017 and on Tuesday rose yet higher to $19,928.

The bull run enjoyed by Bitcoin in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis can in part be attributed to its appeal as a potential store of value beyond the reach of the fiat money system.  

The 90 per cent jump enjoyed by crypto in the past three months, however, can be accredited more directly to the increasing acceptance of it within major institutions and corporations. Payment giant PayPal’s decision to enable crypto buy, hold and sell features to its users being the foremost example.

In the latest instance of the normalisation of cryptocurrencies within the financial world, S&P Dow Jones Indices recently announced its intention to launch cryptocurrency indices.

The prominent financial data company, in partnership with cryptocurrency data firm Lukka, plans to launch a customizable crypto indexing service at some point in 2021.

Global head of innovation and strategy at S&P Dow Jones, Peter Roffman, stated:

“With digital assets such as cryptocurrencies becoming a rapidly emerging asset class, the time is right for independent, reliable and user-friendly benchmarks.”

By mid-afternoon, Bitcoin stood 2.2 per cent lower at $18,985.30, up 37.5 per cent in the past month and 171 per cent on the year-to-date.

Litecoin and Chainlink had suffered the most among the other prominent cryptocurrencies, down 5.2 and 4.7 per cent, respectively.

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