Bitcoin Rises Toward Record High. Why Trump, Fed Rates, ETFs May Be Driving Cryptos. — Barrons.com

By George GloverThe Bitcoin price was rising again Monday, defying a stock-market selloff and putting the cryptocurrency on the brink of a new high.The world's largest token by total market capitalization was up 0.8% to $108,944 over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinDesk. It's less than 3% below the record price of nearly $112,000 it hit back in May.Other digital assets also rose in early trading. Ethereum was up 1.9%, Solana had gained 2.1%, and XRP had added 1.6% over the past 24 hours, according to data from the crypto exchange Kraken.It wasn't obvious what was driving the price action, but one factor could be investors diversifying out of stocks ahead of Washington's July 9 tariff deadline. Futures tracking the benchmark S&P 500 slid 0.5% Monday as the market fretted about President Donald Trump's pledge to start setting unilateral levies over the next few days.The president said "tariff letters and/or deals" will be delivered starting Monday and threatened an additional levy on countries aligned with the Brics group — which includes Brazil, Russia, India and China — in a post on Truth Social overnight."Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy," Trump said.Other factors pushing up digital-asset prices could include more institutional investors piling into crypto exchange-traded funds, or a slight shift in the market's expectations about the chances of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates later this year.Write to George Glover at [email protected] content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.