It has more than doubled in value this year and is up about 45 per cent since Trump’s sweeping election victory on Nov. 5, which has also seen a slew of pro-crypto lawmakers being elected to Congress.

The cryptocurrency’s gains though were more measured on Friday. After touching a fresh record high above $99,000 BTC=, bitcoin pulled back a touch to trade up just 0.5 per cent on the day, around $98,500.

Still, the momentum for further gains appeared strong with bitcoin poised for a third straight week of plus 10 per cent gains. It is also on track for its best monthly performance since February.

Its surge has made bitcoin one of the stand-out winners of so-called “Trump trades” – assets that are seen as winning or losing from Trump’s policies.

The cryptocurrency also appears on the cusp of mainstream acceptance since its creation 16 years ago.

“The longer it survives it is taken more seriously, that’s just the reality of things,” said Shane Oliver, chief economist and head of investment strategy at AMP Sydney.

“As an economist and investor I find it very hard to value it… it’s anyone’s guess. But it does have a momentum aspect to it and at the moment the momentum is up.”

Indeed, bitcoin is up around 130 per cent this year.

Trump embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet” and to accumulate a national stockpile of bitcoin.

Crypto investors see an end to increased scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after Chair Gary Gensler said on Thursday he would step down in January when Trump takes office.

Under Gensler, the SEC sued exchange Coinbase COIN.N, Kraken, Binance and others, alleging that their failure to register with the agency violated SEC rules, accusations the companies deny and are fighting in court.

Still, the approval of U.S.-listed bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January this year helped boost the market.

The SEC had long attempted to block ETFs from investing in bitcoin, citing investor protection concerns, but the products have allowed more investors, including institutional investors, to gain exposure to bitcoin.

More than $4 billion has streamed into U.S.-listed bitcoin exchange-traded funds since the election.

U.S.-listed crypto stocks, which have rallied in recent days, were steadier on Friday as the price surge paused.

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Torrential rains that lashed the coastal city of Townsville in Queensland state this week have swept inland and flooded grazing land gripped by a severe drought for years.

Why it matters: After years of nursing their livestock through drought, Australian farmers see hundreds of thousands of animals die in floods.

Pictures posted on social media showed scores of cattle trapped on patches of high ground surrounded by water, or dead and dying in the mud.

“We’ve had a year and a half of rainfall in about seven days,” cattle grazier Michael Bulley told Reuters by phone from Bindooran Station in Queensland’s outback.

Bulley said he flew over his three properties by helicopter and saw water stretching for miles in each direction. He estimated up to 60 per cent of the cattle he had fed through the drought had been killed by the flooding.

“It’s devastated the country…there’s stock dead everywhere,” he said. “Not just cattle, it’s sheep, kangaroos, wild pigs, they’ve all died and suffered from it.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government expected hundreds of thousands of livestock losses and authorities were working on a plan to supply fodder to trapped animals.

“This will be heartbreaking to these communities that have been experiencing years of drought only to see that turn into a torrential inundation,” Morrison told reporters in Sydney.

The weather bureau said a wide arc of outback stretching some 400 kilometres from Mount Isa, an outback mining town, to Richmond in the east was inundated. The full scale of the disaster would not be known until the clouds cleared.

More than 1,100 people were evacuated from the area this week after authorities opened floodgates at the Ross River Dam when the rains filled reservoirs to overflowing.

Two men died in Townsville, police said.

A spokesperson for global commodities trader Glencore said there was short-term production disruption at its Collinsville and Newlands coal operations because of heavy rain.

“Queensland desperately needed rain and now it’s had way too much in some areas,” said Phin Ziebell, agribusiness analyst at National Australia Bank.

“I just don’t think we have enough information at this stage to determine the scale of the stock losses and what benefit that part of the country can get from a bit of pasture,” he added.

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