The price of bitcoin finally broke above $100,000. And if that headline wasn’t enough to boggle your mind, bitcoin is also the best-performing asset of the last decade.

So, where do we go from here?

If you ask bitcoin true believers—which, fair warning, would mean initiating a conversation with a crypto bro that could be hard to stop—we’re just getting started.

A number of analysts predict that the sky is the limit. After all, investor enthusiasm about lax crypto regulation under a second Trump administration doesn’t seem like it's slowing down anytime soon.

But some crypto bulls are going even further—way further.

Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick wrote earlier today that he believes bitcoin could hit $200,000 by the end of 2025. Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani declared that bitcoin could supplant gold as “the new-age premier ‘store of value’ asset” in the next decade.

And all the way back at the beginning of the year, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest set its price target for bitcoin at $1.5 million, while Wood herself has said she could see bitcoin going as high as $3.8 million.

It’s not all talk. Crypto investors have had a string of wins over the past year that have made it easier than ever for retail traders and institutional investors alike to buy crypto—most notably the approval of spot bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs earlier this year.

Plus, more and more traditional Wall Street vets who previously shunned cryptocurrency as a weird, online phenomenon are now acknowledging that maybe they should have jumped on the bandwagon sooner. If they decide to dive in, bitcoin could go even more mainstream in the world of “TradFi.”

For example, incoming CEO and current President of Charles Schwab, Rick Wurster, told Bloomberg just the other day that the storied Wall Street firm plans to launch its own spot crypto trading once US regulations are relaxed. He even acknowledged he felt “silly” for not buying crypto earlier.

The other shoe could drop

But it’s important to take a walk down memory lane. Back in 2021, crypto zealots everywhere were shouting from the rooftops that bitcoin was unstoppable—just before the asset plummeted sharply, kicking off a long, cold crypto winter.

The price of bitcoin dropped from about $61,000 to $21,000 between November 2021 and November 2022.

Even those touting the power of crypto acknowledge that it is a volatile asset class, and a correction is likely to hit sooner rather than later.

“The crypto community is levered to the gills, and so there will be a correction,” Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz recently told CNBC. But he still argued bitcoin wouldn’t fall below $80,000 again, and thought stocks like MicroStrategy have more to lose than bitcoin itself.

Just remember: The asset’s inherent volatility is why financial advisors say to only allocate up to 5% of your portfolio in bitcoin.

But if you’re up for a wild ride, it’s never been easier to safely invest in blue chip cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.—LB

🟢 What’s up

• Out with the old, in with the new: American Airlines announced it’s dropping Barclays as a branded credit card partner, but is sticking with only Citi from now on. The solo focus spurred the airline to up its revenue forecast, and shares climbed 16.80%.
• Brown-Forman shareholders were popping bottles today after the liquor company announced sales growth of 3% last quarter rather than the 1% decline Wall Street was expecting. Shares jumped 10.74%.
• EV charging equipment maker ChargePoint Holdings surged 10.66% thanks to lower losses in the third quarter—a much-needed win for the beaten-down stock.

What’s down

• You’d think anything bitcoin-related would be blowing up today. Instead, it’s been buy the rumor, sell the news for stocks like Robinhood (down 2.70%), MicroStrategy (down 4.83%), and Coinbase (down 3.13%).
• Intel continues to be roiled by changes at the top as the chipmaker announced two former employees will join the board of directors. Shares fell 5.28%.
• UnitedHealth Group fell 5.21% a day after the CEO of its main division was fatally shot in New York City yesterday.

Sometimes, a joke can go too far. Take the case of a shiba inu named Kabosu, whose image graced the original doge meme. Instead of being forgotten in the shifting sands of internet lore, the meme became the inspiration for the hit cryptocurrency DOGE, which then became the inspiration for a new government department run by Elon Musk.

But Dogecoin isn’t just a joke—the original memecoin has outperformed bitcoin over the last month, and its 2024 returns are triple those of bitcoin. Its success has inspired a new generation of memecoins, and they’re finding a waiting audience of crypto traders looking to cash in.

Some memecoins are based on other real-life animals, such as MOO DENG, inspired by the viral Thai pygmy hippo Moo Deng, or PNUT, based on the viral, orphaned squirrel Peanut (RIP). Others take a cartoonish angle, like PEPE, based on the cartoon frog Pepe, or CHILLGUY, inspired by a pretty chill cartoon dog that the internet loves for some reason.

Here’s the punchline: CHILLGUY is the newest and smallest of the bunch, and already has a market cap of $459 million. PEPE, on the other hand, has a cap of $9.18 billion—higher than that of the Nissan, US Steel, or H&R Block.

Maybe the joke’s on anyone who hasn’t bought a memecoin yet. But whatever you do, don’t put your money into HAWK, the scam memecoin from the Hawk Tuah girl.

On October 31, 2008, a mysterious figure known only as Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a nine-page whitepaper that would change the world.

Bitcoin has been declared dead by the media 477 times in the 16 years since that fateful day Nakamoto revealed his idea for a new online payment system, yet here we are: staring at a six-figure price point for the king of cryptocurrency.

But the road to get here has been long and winding, with shifting public opinion, angry political rhetoric, and a piece of NFT artwork called The Merge that sold for $91.8 million.

For the uninitiated, the curious, or the nostalgic, here’s a short & sweet timeline of bitcoin’s rise to $100,000.

The early days

The Genesis Block, an undeniably cool name for the first block on bitcoin’s blockchain, was released on January 3, 2009. Hardly anyone noticed, and the nascent crypto wallowed at around $0.10 per bitcoin for well over a year.

There it would stay until October 2010, when only the nerdiest of techies began to understand the potential of a decentralized payment system. Bitcoin climbed to $0.20, then $0.30 by the end of the year. It wasn’t until February 2011 that the crypto broke above $1.00 for the first time (probably when you should’ve bought it).

Although a niche audience of devotees was slowly but surely coalescing around crypto, 2013 was the year that bitcoin really began to gain attention.…

Click here to read more about bitcoin’s rise from obscurity to crypto king.

• El Salvador President Nayib Bukele was ridiculed for embracing bitcoin. Now, he’s taking a victory lap.
• Jobless claims rose from 215,000 last week to 224,000 this week—a moderate jump that still keeps the number of people filing for unemployment insurance below the historical average.
• They see me rollin’: Pope Francis has gone green, cruising in a new all-electric popemobile made by Mercedes.
• Need help tracking all of President-elect Trump’s appointees? Here’s a handy chart.
• Tesla spent $2.4 million protecting Elon Musk in 2023. Take a look at what other companies shell out to keep their C-suite safe.
• With crypto making headlines today, this NFT obituary is well worth a read.

Right around now, when bitcoin reaches a flashy new all-time high, financial reporters inevitably highlight the story of Laszlo Hanyecz. And who are we to buck that time-honored tradition?

For those who don’t recognize the name, Hanyecz’s tale is one etched in the crypto annals. A software developer by trade, Hanyecz was one of the first-ever bitcoin miners, someone who uses computing power to create more bitcoin. Nowadays, mining is a sophisticated global business—but back in 2010, only a year after bitcoin’s debut, Hanyecz was able to accrue a sizable hoard of bitcoins by himself.

Of course, they were only worth a few pennies at the time, and Hanyecz couldn’t exactly use them for much of anything. But on May 22, 2010, Hanyecz made history as the first person to ever use bitcoin in a financial transaction. So, what’d he buy?

Two Papa John’s pizzas for $25.00, or approximately 10,000 bitcoins—which the rough math says would be worth a little over $1,000,000,000 today.

Hanyecz’s story is something of a parable in the crypto community, highlighting the perils of bailing on the technology too early, reinforcing the “hodl” attitude many bitcoin zealots hold dear. But his tale has come to be celebrated as well, with May 22 widely known in crypto circles as Pizza Day.

Who knows what the history books will call today.—MR

Finally, we’ve got the monthly US employment report tomorrow. This is the big one, an all-encompassing breakdown of nonfarm payrolls that has the power to move markets. Last month’s report was an aberration, dropping from a 254,000 increase in September to a mere 12,000 new jobs in October. Don’t worry, that was due to hurricane damage and a strike at Boeing—economists predict it will bounce back above 200,000 new jobs in November.

Before the open

• Genesco is the company you’ve never heard of behind footwear brands we’ve all heard of, like Vans and Converse. Lately, shoes have been a volatile market—just look at Foot Locker earlier this week or Nike all of this year. Genesco is in the same boat, and has had to rely on discounts to boost sales, which was bad news for margins and its bottom line last quarter. Shareholders are hoping that this quarter brings better news, or at least plans to right the ship next year. Consensus: $0.22 EPS, $572.1 million in revenue.
• Kirkland’s is struggling to keep up with the big changes afoot in the retail industry. The home goods brand has sagged all year, though the one highlight of the last few months was a new deal with Bed Bath & Beyond that gives Kirkland’s the right to operate new BBBY locations. Shareholders expect more details from management in tomorrow’s call, as well as lower losses and an end to sinking same-store sales. Consensus: -$0.32 EPS, $110.32 million in revenue.