After reaching the $10,000 mark for the first time in more than a year Friday, the price of bitcoin briefly surged above $11,000 on Saturday but was struggling to push past the fresh threshold in Sunday trading.
Bitcoin BTCUSD, +4.31% was recently up 0.3% at $10,723.37 Sunday evening Eastern U.S. time, according to CoinDesk. Over the weekend, bitcoin traded as high as $11,307.69 intraday, its highest level since March 2018.
It was the third price milestone in a week, after the world’s largest cryptocurrency topped the $9,000 level for the first time in 13 months last Sunday.
Bitcoin’s price is up 193% year to date, with most of the gain coming in the past three months.
Last week, one bitcoin analyst predicted that prices could hit $40,000 “in a few months” now that the $10,000 level had been cracked. “Bottom line: Crypto winter looks over,” Fundstrat’s Thomas Lee said.
After topping out above $19,000 in December 2017, bitcoin prices sank to as low as $3,122 in December 2018.
As of Sunday evening, bitcoin’s market cap sat at roughly $190 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
Bitcoin’s recent surge has boosted competing cryptocurrencies as well, with ethereum ETHUSD, +2.35% rising 20% in the past month and litecoin LTCUSD, +2.07% up 37% in that time. The sector has also been helped by Facebook Inc.’s FB, -0.10% unveiling last week of its upcoming digital currency Libra, which some analysts say could take crypto to the masses.