Bitcoin tops $66,000, hits high on mainstreaming excitement

New York: Bitcoin jumped to a record Wednesday, topping 66,000 for the first time, as it rides a wave of excitement about getting further accepted by the financial establishment.

Bitcoin was trading at 66,901.30, up 7.6%, as of 10:52 a.m. Eastern time. It's roared back after sinking below 30,000 during the summer to top its prior record set in April. That previous all-time high was nearly 64,889, according to CoinDesk.

A day earlier, the first exchange-traded fund linked to Bitcoin attracted huge interest from investors, giving another boost to the surging field of cryptocurrencies. Shares of the ProShares BitCoin Strategy ETF changed hands 24.1 million times in a resounding debut.

It was off to another strong start Wednesday, with volume topping 9 million within the first hour of trading. The ETF doesn't invest directly in Bitcoin. It instead invests in the futures market tied to Bitcoin, but the industry sees the ETF bringing in a new class of investors to Bitcoin. Someone with an old-school brokerage account can buy the ETF, for example, without having to learn what a hot or cold wallet is.

Investors are getting more interested in crypto because they're always looking for assets whose prices moves independently of everything else in their portfolios.

One school of thought says Bitcoin in particular can offer investors protection from high inflation, and some fans see it as akin to digital gold, though it doesn't have a long track record to back that up.