Bitcoin (BTC-USD) hovered near a fresh record past $111,000 per token on Thursday, driven by institutional buying, a crypto-friendly environment, and an increasing appetite for an alternative store of wealth amid US debt fears.

The digital currency passed an all-time intraday high past $111,700 as a massive tax-cut bill made its way through Congress.

"The market today is reacting to the fact that the government has sort of said it's on board to grow deficits, to print more money, to expand the fiscal debt — and that's forcing people to look outside of fiat currencies to an alternative," Matt Hougan, CIO of digital asset management firm Bitwise, told Yahoo Finance on Thursday morning.

The new record comes amid concerns of recent rising bond yields, a sign that investors may be growing uneasy with ballooning US debt levels.

"I think something may have started to break with investors' long-term appetite for debt," Hougan added.

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Institutional buying has also lifted prices in recent weeks as spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and a friendly regulatory framework promised by the Trump administration have triggered increased demand.

"That's new demand against fixed supply, and that pushes prices up," Hougan said, highlighting more than $8 billion flowing into bitcoin-related ETFs in the past 30 days.

Bitcoin has rallied 60% since President Trump won the White House and put in place key figures to forge ahead with a token-friendly framework, a promise on which he campaigned.

One of those moves included placing cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins as SEC chair following Gary Gensler's departure in January.

Read more: How would Trump's strategic bitcoin reserve work?Bitcoin has surged more than 45% since hitting an April low. (Riccardo Miliani/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)·RICCARDO MILANI via Getty Images

This week's push higher in prices also comes on the heels of a key procedural win in the Senate on Monday night for legislation to regulate stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to assets like the US dollar. The bill, which could face a final vote as early as this week, is seen as a major step toward broader crypto adoption.

Meanwhile, on Thursday morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that crypto exchange Kraken plans to offer "tokenized equities" of popular stocks like Apple (AAPL), Tesla (TSLA), and Nvidia (NVDA) to non-US customers.

Adding to the industry's momentum, Coinbase (COIN) on Monday became the first and only cryptocurrency exchange to join the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) index — a symbolic milestone for the industry.

Companies are increasingly adding bitcoin to their balance sheets.

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"Globally, ~80 corporates have adopted the 'Bitcoin Standard,' adding BTC to their treasuries and now holding approximately 3.4% of total supply," Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani wrote in a recent note.

That amounts to roughly 720,000 tokens — up 160% from the 270,000 held at the end of 2023.

Bernstein forecasts that bitcoin will reach $200,000 by year-end.

Ines Ferre is a Senior Business Reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre.

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