To billionaire investor Mark Cuban, bitcoin has a major edge over other cryptocurrencies.

It has “a HUGE advantage” in that it has “ZERO competition” as a store of value, Cuban tweeted on Saturday. Cuban even calls bitcoin “the best store of value on the market.”

In his opinion, that’s due to its algorithmic scarcity, which makes bitcoin limited in supply by design. Because of this, Cuban sees bitcoin as an asset that will appreciate as demand increases. He has previously compared it to gold, even saying that bitcoin is a better store of value than gold.

The “Shark Tank” investor and Dallas Mavericks owner is so bullish on bitcoin that he predicts that it, along with Ethereum, will be viewed as “safe havens” in crypto in the future, meaning that bitcoin will be seen as an asset that will keep its value or grow in value, even when the overall crypto market faces turbulence.

But despite Cuban’s comments, keep in mind that financial experts generally consider cryptocurrency risky, volatile and speculative, and warn that investors should only invest what they can afford to lose…read more.

Bitcoin climbed above $60,000 Friday, pushing the digital coin further toward its all-time high, as traders speculated U.S. regulators would clear the first bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund.

The world’s biggest cryptocurrency surged as high as $60,314, notching its highest level since Apr. 18. Bitcoin was last trading 4% higher in the last 24 hours, at a price of $59,945, according to Coin Metrics data.

Traders are optimistic about the chances of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission giving the green light to the first bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund, according to analysts.

The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF is scheduled to debut at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, and experts believe the SEC unlikely to object to the product…read more.

Bitcoin has staged an epic rally since its lows near $40,000 in late September, surging almost 35% and easily passing by key technical resistance levels.

Driving bitcoin’s surge past a $1 trillion market valuation are are range of factors, including increased appetite from institutional investors who are seeking a hedge to inflation, JPMorgan said in a note on Thursday. Bitcoin’s growing role as a perceived inflation hedge has taken the wind out of gold prices, which have been flat for almost two years even as concerns about rising inflation grow.

“Institutional investors appear to be returning to bitcoin perhaps seeing it as a better inflation hedge than gold,” JPMorgan said, adding that the prior trend of money flowing out of gold and into bitcoin has reemerged in recent weeks.

JPMorgan offered three main drivers as to why bitcoin rallied from $40,000 to about $55,000 in a matter of weeks, according to the note.

1. “The recent assurances by US policy makers that there is no intention to follow China’s steps towards banning the usage or mining of cryptocurrencies.”
2. “The recent rise of the Lightning Network and 2nd layer payments solutions helped by El Salvador’s bitcoin adoption.”
3. “The re-emergence of inflation concerns among investors has renewed interest in the usage of bitcoin as an inflation hedge.”…read more.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO, remains a skeptic of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value.

“It’s got no intrinsic value. And regulators are going to regulate the h— out of it,” Dimon recently told Axios CEO Jim VandeHei.

Dimon said that bitcoin will be around long-term, but “I’ve always believed it’ll be made illegal someplace, like China made it illegal, so I think it’s a little bit of fool’s gold.”

Dimon also said that bitcoin should be regulated by the government. “They have to,” he told VandeHei. “You can’t regulate everything a bank does in terms of moving money and not regulate what you would call money,” like cryptocurrency…read more.

El Salvador has mined 0.00599179 bitcoin, or about $269, with power harnessed from a volcano.

President Nayib Bukele – who has banked his political future on a nationwide bitcoin experiment – tweeted early Friday morning that this is the country’s maiden voyage into volcano-powered bitcoin mining.

On Tuesday, the president posted a flashy 25-second teaser video, which includes shots of a government-branded shipping container full of bitcoin mining rigs, technicians installing and plugging in ASIC miners, as well as sweeping landscape aerials of an energy factory in the thick of a forest, bordering a volcano.

The video, which has since gone viral with more than 2.3 million views, is captioned simply with “First steps…”

If the Central American country is, indeed, minting new coin, it will mean that Bukele has made good on a promise first announced in June, when he said that he had instructed state-owned geothermal electric company, LaGeo SA de CV to “put up a plan to offer facilities for #Bitcoin mining with very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcanos.”…read more.