At the time of this writing, the bitcoin price hit a new all-time high of $9,855, just 1.45% under the $10,000 price tag. Technicals show positive short-term momentum so we can expect bitcoin to achieve the historical price tag of $10,000 in the next 24 hours.

What is driving the price of Bitcoin?

The major driver is the CME’s launch of bitcoin futures scheduled for December 10. Why is this important? Firstly, this will importantly increase the liquidity of bitcoin. Currently, many investors find it difficult to buy and trade cryptocurrencies due to strict anti-money laundering laws and know your customer regulations. Secondly, many interested investors are not equipped with the technical knowledge to enter the cryptocurrency marketplace and this gives them a fair opportunity to make some money through bitcoin futures contracts.

Institutional investors are not sitting quietly in the corner and have been making comments on bitcoin for the past year. Coinbase seized the moment and recently announced that is that their goal is to help accelerate the flow of institutional money into cryptocurrencies. With the inflow of institutional money, the thought of bitcoin at $500,000 in three years is not farfetched.

Demand from Japan and South Korea

In Japan, bitcoin has already been adopted as a mean of payment almost equal to the Japanese yen, while in South Korea Bithumb and Coinone sell bitcoin at offline exchanges. The Japanese yen dominates the BTC volumes with 60% of all trades happening in JPY. The Korean won is the third most important fiat currency covering 9% of BTC trades, behind US dollar with 25%. However, won covers 50% of all Bitcoin Cash (BCH) volume.