Bitcoin's price quadrupled in late 2020, when a flurry of events indicated it was getting closer to being popular. PayPal Holdings Ltd., the world's largest payments company, began allowing users to use it for transactions in October, and many major financial institutions have launched funds to make it easy for investors to allocate cryptocurrency to their portfolios. 

Elon Musk, the notorious CEO of Tesla Inc, who spent $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and wants to recognize it as payment for electric vehicles, is one of its proponents.

Around the same time, the influx of capital injected into the financial system by central banks during the pandemic reignited controversy about whether such actions might lead to inflation, boosting demand for gold and Bitcoin, both of which are scarce commodities.