Bitcoin price rose above the long-awaited $100,000 mark for the first time ever late Wednesday evening.

The flagship cryptocurrency was last up more than 5% at $101,072.00, according to Coin Metrics. It previously rose as high as $101,555.40.

The move came hours after President-elect Donald Trump announced plans to name Paul Atkins chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. This move is seen by the crypto community as in line with his promise to not just replace Gary Gensler – who has become something of a villain in the crypto space for the agency’s regulation-through-enforcement approach to the industry under his leadership – but to create a more supportive regulatory environment for the crypto industry in general.

On the same day, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at the DealBook conference that Bitcoin is “just like gold, except it’s virtual and digital.” He further clarified that “people are not using it as a means of payment or as a store of value” and that “it is not a competitor to the dollar, but in fact a competitor to gold.”

It’s a day of celebration for longtime Bitcoin investors who have held on for dear life, or “obeyed,” during several of the cryptocurrency’s boom-and-bust cycles, during which government and financial institutions remained dismissive—and even hostile—to the asset class.

This is largely due to the cryptocurrency’s anti-establishment roots. The original idea for Bitcoin was proposed at the height of the 2008 financial crisis: a “peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another, without going through a financial institution.” said the founder, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in the Bitcoin white paper.

However, in recent years, the industry has shown the value of Bitcoin to much of the institutional investing world. BlackRockLoyalty, Invesco and others launched the first spot Bitcoin ETFs earlier this year – Bitcoin’s “IPO” moment – and growing demand from institutions has helped drive the price higher. In November, Rick Wurster, the new CEO of Charles Schwabsaid the company was preparing to enter spot crypto trading pending regulatory changes expected in the next Trump administration.

“We are experiencing a paradigm shift. After four years of political purgatory, Bitcoin and the entire digital asset ecosystem are on the verge of entering the financial mainstream,” Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz told CNBC.

Bitcoin is widely expected to hit the landmark $100,000 mark since the US presidential election. However, excited investors brought Bitcoin closer to this mark much sooner than originally expected; On November 22nd, it rose as high as $99,849.99. There is high hope that President-elect Trump will implement several pro-crypto initiatives in the coming year – including establishing a national strategic Bitcoin reserve or stockpile and no taxes on crypto transactions and opening up public crypto stock markets through more initial public offerings .

“In the long term, I’m optimistic,” Novogratz added. “It will not be a clear line and investors should always think about taking profits. But with a pro-crypto government taking over in the US, it will be hard for the rest of the world not to take notice.