TOKYO (AP) — Bitcoin surpassed $100,000 for the first time, while Asian shares were mostly higher Thursday, taking their cues from another Wall Street record rally.
U.S. futures edged lower while oil prices crept up.
Bitcoin has been nudging toward $100,000 and it surged late Wednesday, U.S. time, after President-elect Donald Trump chose crypto advocate Paul Atkins as his nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. The cryptocurrency has climbed dramatically from $69,374 on Nov. 5, Election Day. As of 11 p.m. ET, it was up 4.7% at $103,308.27.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.6% to 2,449.74, extending a 1.4% decline the day before as President Yoon Suk Yeol was facing possible impeachment after he suddenly declared martial law on Tuesday night. He revoked the martial law declaration six hours later.
Yoon accepted his defense minister’s resignation Thursday as opposition parties moved to impeach both of them. The main opposition Democratic Party and other small opposition parties submitted a joint motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday over his martial law declaration.
Elsewhere in Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.3% to 39,406.04, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.2% to 8,474.90. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 1.0% to 19,541.09. The Shanghai Composite gained 0.3% to 3,374.91.
Taiwan’s Taiex gained nearly 0.1%, while the Sensex in India was down 0.1%.
“As the dust settles and a fragile calm returns to the Korean markets, Asia braces for a bouncy Thursday. The mood is buoyed further by a fresh wave of record highs on Wall Street,” Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management, said in a commentary.
On Wednesday, shares got a boost from upbeat talk by tech companies about the artificial-intelligence boom.
The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% to 6,086.49, adding to what’s set to be one of its best years of the millennium. It was the 56th time the index has hit an all-time high this year after climbing in 11 of the last 12 days.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.7% to 45,014.04, while the Nasdaq composite added 1.3% to its own record, closing at 19,735.12.
Salesforce jumped 11%, helping pull the market higher after delivering stronger revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though its profit fell just short.
CEO Mark Benioff highlighted the company’s artificial-intelligence offering for customers, saying “the rise of autonomous AI agents is revolutionizing global labor, reshaping how industries operate and scale.”
All the optimistic talk helped Nvidia, the company whose chips are powering much of the move into AI, rally 3.5%. It was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500 by far.