The bitcoin price is less than $100 away from surpassing $10,000 after demonstrating a strong week of momentum and volume. In Hong Kong and South Korea, the bitcoin price has already reached $10,000.

What’s Next After $10,000?

For many months prior to November 2017, the $10,000 threshold was considered an important psychological support level for most traders, because it marked an important milestone for bitcoin. But, once bitcoin surpasses the $10,000 mark, investors will look towards the $12,000 and $14,000 mid-term support levels and anticipate a potential move from the $10,000 region to the all-time high price at $20,000.

In less than three weeks, the bitcoin price has increased from $6,500 to $9,900, after a 30-minute candle pushed the value of bitcoin from $6,500 to $8,000. The daily trading volume of bitcoin has increased to nearly $8 billion but the daily trading volume of the entire market has declined by more than $6 billion over the past two days, which signifies that the interest towards alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) and tokens have moved to bitcoin and Ethereum, two of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the market.

In periods of extreme volatility, market change, and recovery, major cryptocurrencies tend to outperform tokens, because investors try to minimize risk. But, if bitcoin and Ethereum continue to sustain their strong momentum, it is likely that the altcoin season will emerge in the short-term, as investors start to take more risks and place large orders on tokens.

Over the past 24 hours, tokens such as WanCoin, ICON, Decentraland, and Ontology, which have demonstrated large gains against both bitcoin and the US dollar throughout the past 3 weeks, have recorded losses in the range of 3 to 10 percent.

As CCN reported on May 4, traders and investors are already looking towards the mid-term, expecting the price of bitcoin to cross key levels in the upcoming weeks. If the price of bitcoin surpasses the $10,000 mark, given that bitcoin has moved gradually over the past three weeks without major spikes, it is likely that bitcoin continues to build momentum until $12,000.

Brian Kelly, an investor and a contributor to CNBC’s Fast Money, stated that the bitcoin price will continue to surge in the short-term as more banks like Goldman Sachs start to trade bitcoin futures on behalf of their clients.

More to that, as non-profit organization Coin Center recently reported, the government has clarified that bitcoin is not a security, reassuring investors that trading bitcoin as a currency and an asset does not require an approval from the SEC.

“It’s a complicated area. Because, as you said, there are different types of cryptoassets. Let me try and divide them into two areas. A pure medium of exchange, the one that’s most often cited, is Bitcoin. As a replacement for currency, that has been determined by most people to not be a security,” said SEC chairman Jay Clayton.