Bitcoin bounces back above $96,000 as investors eye $100,000 milestone heading into Thanksgiving holiday

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Bitcoin on Wednesday climbed back above $96,000, recovering slightly from a pullback this week that knocked it from record levels.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by nearly 6% at $96,676.70, according to Coin Metrics, while ether jumped more than 9% to $3,636.46. The broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, gained 7%.

Although bitcoin is widely viewed as a store of value and a digital alternative to gold, the cryptocurrency often trades in tandem with the stock market. On Wednesday, however, it decoupled with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which was lower by 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 dropped as well.

Coinbase was up more than 6% as bitcoin lifted it along with other crypto stocks. Robinhood, which offers crypto trading and is viewed as a beneficiary of a more crypto-friendly environment in the incoming Trump administration, gained 3%. MicroStrategy, which trades as a proxy for bitcoin, advanced 9%.

Bitcoin has been regularly hitting records since the Nov. 5 presidential election, up about 38% in that time. On Friday, it rose as high as $99,849.99 before testing the $90,000 support level this week.

"The bitcoin bull market has legs," Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital, said in a report Wednesday. "There will be corrections and hiccups, which is normal. There could even some twilight regulatory or law enforcement actions from the outgoing Biden administration that jitter markets. But a combination of increasing institutional, corporate, and potentially nation-state adoption, a new U.S. administration that is shaping up to be extremely pro-bitcoin, and solid positioning and network data all point to