The crypto industry happy today to the news that Bitcoin has broken its previous record for the highest (ATH) price ever. But whether the coin actually broke that record – and what the number was that needed to be beaten in the first place – depends on who you ask.
Decrypt, for example, reported on Tuesday morning the news, which is based on the American crypto exchange Coinbase and shows a high price of over 69,324 US dollars after numerous closing discussions since Monday. Coinbase’s previous all-time high was below the $69,000 mark.
Ro Shirole, chief commercial officer at Saxet, a Bitcoin mining company, said Decipher that he tracked today's Bitcoin price using CoinDesk Bitcoin index (XBX), which uses prices from multiple exchanges and weights them using a proprietary algorithm.
According to XBX, the price to beat was $68,991 today, achieved in November 2021. And according to the same source, BTC briefly climbed to $69,209 today before subsequently crashing to below $61,000. But a win is still a win, and this one seemed pretty clear, didn't it?
Not so fast. Per CoinGeckoAnother leading cryptocurrency price tracker, BTC actually reached $69,044 already in 2021. And today, the coin only climbed as high as $68,912 before crashing, according to CoinGecko's own algorithmic price aggregation across multiple tracked exchanges.
So if CoinGecko is your source of truth: No ATH for you.
How can such a discrepancy exist between carefully crafted price tracking algorithms that only exist to agree on a single number? What matters is how these various proprietary equations determine the price of Bitcoin at any given time – and there isn't necessarily one right answer.
“The ATH price is not necessarily the absolute highest retail price,” Messari Research previously said told Decipher. “Due to the nature of the historical data we analyze, we are not always able to review every trade for an asset. For some assets, the stated ATH may refer to the highest daily average ever or a price sample on the day of the all-time high [occurred].”
Due to little more than the human desire for simplicity, many crypto traders and media outlets have apparently chosen a clean $69,000 as the bar that Bitcoin must surpass today to reach a new all-time high.
Many exchanges, including Binance and Coinbase, have achieved this feat. This wasn't the case for others. But when it comes to cryptocurrencies, perception matters, and BTC's brief crash after the brief ATH anniversary suggests that the market has perceived the event as having occurred.
But what’s actually behind a number like Bitcoin’s all-time high? Beyond the ceremonial significance, does the absolute truth about whether or not that number has been exceeded really matter?
“I don’t put much emphasis on the specific number,” Saxet’s Shirole said of Bitcoin’s all-time high price.
Instead, he's concerned with more practical things – like what people believe and how they react to events like today's.
“When it withdraws, [I look at] where perceived support appears to be at the lower end,” he added.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment or other advice.
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