Bitcoin climbs as high as $11,860, hitting a more than 3-week high

Bitcoin soared 9% on Monday, performing like a safe haven asset as it edged past $11,000 for the first time since around mid-July.

The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency climbed as high as $11,860, according to CoinDesk data, hitting a more than 3-week high. Bitcoin’s value now accounts for nearly 70% of the global crypto market, according to CoinMarketCap.

Global stock markets on the other hand have been sliding lower on the back of renewed trade uncertainty, after President Donald Trump said last week that Washington would impose 10% tariffs on another $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index slipped 1.6% on Monday while the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan plummeted 2.5%. Dow futures meanwhile were off by about 100 points.

“Bitcoin has many use cases and one of the most important is as a form of digital gold,” Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency comparison platform CryptoCompare, told CNBC by email on Monday. “We have seen bitcoin jump before on macro uncertainty as it becomes a conduit and flight-to-safety asset.”

Bitcoin’s jump in value also comes as China allowed the yuan to break the seven-per-dollar level for the first time in 11 years, triggering fears of a potential currency war.

The yuan fell after China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, set the currency’s daily midpoint at 6.9225 per dollar, its weakest level since December last year.

Simon Peters, an analyst at trading platform eToro, said Chinese investors could be seeking to diversify as the yuan  depreciates.

“Given that Chinese investors make up a large proportion of crypto investors, there’s a strong possibility some are backing bitcoin’s chances against the yuan,” Peters said in a note on Monday.

The cryptocurrency has been on the rise in 2019, doubling in price in the last three months alone. It’s still below a year-to-date high of $13,880, and a long way short of the near-$20,000 all-time record it set in late 2017.

Bitcoin’s rise has been helped in part by news of huge companies like Facebook getting involved in the space, with the social network having announced plans for a cryptocurrency called Libra back in June.