On Sunday (January 3), Bitcoin is celebrating its 12th birthday (i.e. 12th the anniversary of the mining of the genesis block) in style, extending its parabolic run by breaking through $34,500, and seemingly in a hurry to get to $50,000 before the end of the month.
According to data from TradingView, on crypto exchange Coinbase, at 07:32 UTC on January 3, the Bitcoin price reached $34,730.

According to data by CryptoCompare, currently (as of 08:00 on January 3), Bitcoin is trading at $34,536, up 15.55% in the past 24-hour period and up 19.20% in 2021. Bitcoin’s market cap is roughly $639 billion at the moment.
Earlier today, crypto exchange Kraken reminded everyone that it was on 3 January 2009 that Satoshi Nakamotomined Bitcoin’s genesis block, i.e. the first block in Bitcoin’s blockchain.
On January 3rd 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto mined the #Bitcoin Genesis Block ⛏️
Satoshi left a message in the code of this block: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝟎𝟑/𝐉𝐚𝐧/𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟗 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬 📰 https://t.co/EiycuIAcdG pic.twitter.com/44Fm7QJ9PR
— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) January 3, 2021
One of the first to congratulate Bitcoin on its 12th birthday was Jack Dorsey, the CEO of both Twitter and Square.
Happy birthday #Bitcoin
— jack (@jack) January 3, 2021
Gabor Gurbacs, Director of Digital Asset Strategy at VanEck/MVIS, pointed out yesterday that Bitcoin’s market cap is much greater than the market cap of any of the top 10 global banks
#Bitcoin exceeds any top 10 global bank by market capitalization. That's the tweet. pic.twitter.com/kexk4xgEKr
— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) January 2, 2021
Another reminder of how well Bitcoin is doing at the moment came from the following tweet, which shows just one bitcoin (at current prices) is enough to buy a brand new Tesla.
A #bitcoin now buys you a Tesla. So, when will you accept it, @elonmusk? pic.twitter.com/RONfVvH9i1
— Documenting Bitcoin 📄 (@DocumentBitcoin) January 3, 2021
Crypto analyst Lark Davis made an interesting observation regarding MicroStrategy’s brilliant decision to buy and hold Bitcoin for use as its main treasury reserve asset.
Microstrategy has seen insane gains on all their #bitcoin buys!
1st 340%
2nd 340%
3rd 170%
4th 140%Michael Saylor is a legend with incredibly large balls
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) January 3, 2021
Crypto analyst Vijay Boyapati commented that at the rate Bitcoin’s price is going up, it seems like it will get to $100,000 in a matter of months.
At this rate #Bitcoin is going to crash down to 100k in months.
— Vijay Boyapati (@real_vijay) January 3, 2021
Ashwath Balakrishnan, Research Analyst at Delphi Digital, points out one reason for Bitcoin being more appealing now that it is trading above the $20,000 level.
Buying $BTC post- ATH is actually superior than sniping the bottom from a risk adjusted lens
If you bought at $20k you're up 50% with minimal friction in between
Bottom buyers ~$4k are up almost 8x but their risk of blowing up was much higher
— Ashwath Balakrishnan (@ashwath_22) January 2, 2021
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Bitcoin has gone up 395% (vs USD) since its last birthday.