Bitcoin continued its gains on Tuesday, reaching a new record high as a surprise investment from Tesla made the asset’s drift towards the mainstream more convincing.

The cryptocurrency hit a high of more than $48,000 during morning trading before dropping back below the $47,000 mark.

Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at AVATrade, expressed optimism at the apparent bull rally, remarking that it seems like “nothing is going to stop the bitcoin price from touching the $50,000 price level”.

The record gains were observed as Bitcoin has seen a significant rise in attention from mainstream firms – first from PayPal, which moved to adopt Bitcoin as a supported transaction method on its platform last year, and more recently from Tesla, which revealed on Monday that it had invested $1.5 billion in the currency.

Like PayPal, Tesla also said that it planned to accept payments from its customers in the form of Bitcoin.

However, Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency to have seen a surge of investor interest. Dogecoin, the meme currency boosted by Elon Musk as a “joke”, has risen 800% in a matter of days. Bitcoin’s more serious rival, Ethereum, also reached a record high of $1,784.85 on Tuesday morning trading.

While Bitcoin’s jump on Monday was the largest daily rise seen in more than three years, it follows a period of significant growth. The cryptocurrency has more than doubled than value over the past two months as traders have sought out alternative wealth stores.

[ymal]

The total capitalisation of the cryptoasset market is now an estimated $1.2 trillion, though regulation of the digital-only currencies is still light.