Bitcoin, the biggest and original cryptocurrency, soared to a record $19,918 on Tuesday, buoyed by demand from investors who variously view the virtual currency as a "risk-on" asset, a hedge against inflation and a payment method gaining mainstream acceptance.
It is North American investors who have been the bigger winners in the 165% rally this year.
Weekly net inflows of bitcoin - a proxy for new buyers - to platforms serving mostly North American users have jumped over 7,000 times this year to over 216,000 bitcoin worth $3.4 billion in mid-November, data compiled for Reuters shows.
East Asian exchanges have lost out.
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The change is being driven by an increasing appetite for bitcoin among bigger U.S. investors, according to Reuters interviews with cryptocurrency platforms and investors from the United States and Europe to South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan.
"The sudden influx of institutional interest from the North American region is driving a shift in bitcoin