Bitcoin Crossed $105,000 in December 15 UTC Trading

Bitcoin crossed $105,000 during the UTC trading session dated December 15, 2024, setting a record as the post-election rally extended into a continuously traded weekend market. Coinbase’s BTC-USD daily candle reached $105,100, while a contemporaneous market report recorded a $105,120.90 price at 23:27 GMT.

The move mattered beyond another round-number milestone. Bitcoin had first traded above $100,000 on December 5, and the December 15 advance showed that buyers were still willing to establish higher prices after that threshold had been breached. It also arrived as the boundary between cryptocurrency markets and conventional equity indexes was becoming more visible through MicroStrategy’s scheduled admission to the Nasdaq-100.

What the December 15 data establish

Coinbase’s 24-hour BTC-USD candle beginning at 00:00 UTC on December 15 opened at $101,400, reached a low of $101,221.34, climbed to $105,100 and ended at $104,447.76. The first-to-last-trade change within that Coinbase bucket was therefore approximately 3.01%, calculated as $104,447.76 divided by $101,400 minus one.

The candle’s high-low range was approximately 3.83%, calculated from $105,100 and $101,221.34. Those figures describe one U.S.-dollar trading pair on one exchange. They are not a consolidated global bitcoin price, and the last trade in a UTC bucket is not an official closing auction comparable to the close of a stock exchange.

Contemporaneous reporting supplied a closely aligned observation. Investing.com recorded bitcoin at a record $105,120.90 at 23:27 GMT on December 15. Reuters subsequently reported an early-Asian-trading high of $105,142. The small differences are consistent with separate venues, observation times and data methodologies rather than evidence of a single universally authoritative bitcoin print.

An institutional catalyst, with limits

Nasdaq had announced on December 13 that MicroStrategy would enter the Nasdaq-100 before the market opened on December 23. The company had become widely treated as an equity-market proxy for bitcoin because of its large corporate holdings. Its inclusion meant funds designed to track the Nasdaq-100 would need exposure to MicroStrategy shares when the reconstitution took effect.

That mechanism was indirect. Index-tracking funds would acquire or rebalance MSTR shares, not purchase bitcoin under a Nasdaq requirement. Any later decision by MicroStrategy to raise capital or buy additional bitcoin remained a separate corporate action. The announcement nevertheless mattered to the December 15 market narrative because it placed a bitcoin-concentrated public company inside a major benchmark used by funds, derivatives and structured products.

Contemporaneous reports also attributed bullish sentiment to President-elect Donald Trump’s pro-cryptocurrency platform and discussion of a national bitcoin stockpile. Those reports document what traders were discussing; they do not prove that one political statement, the Nasdaq decision or any reported large-holder transfer caused the price record.

What could be concluded on December 15

The defensible event-day conclusion was narrow: bitcoin traded above $105,000 in the December 15 UTC window, with independent observations clustering around $105,100 to $105,121. The move extended an established rally and coincided with greater institutional attention to bitcoin-linked public equities.

The record did not establish a durable price floor, implementation of a federal bitcoin reserve or a guaranteed flow of index capital into bitcoin itself. Crypto trades continuously across fragmented venues, so later highs, reversals or policy outcomes should not be projected backward into the evidence available on December 15, 2024.