Bitcoin’s chances of reaching the $40,000 mark are becoming a top priority for cryptocurrency speculators as they enter the finish line of a year in which the largest digital asset more than doubled in value.

Over the past 11 months, the price of the token has risen about 130% since the cryptocurrency storm of 2022, outpacing investments such as stocks or gold. Hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates next year and expectations that the first dot-com bitcoin exchange-traded funds will appear in the U.S. have together created a powerful elixir.

The rally has survived a U.S. crackdown that has put Sam Bankman-Fried behind bars for fraud on FTX, while leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao have received criminal records and hefty fines. Optimists believe that the crackdown on questionable practices and the recent flurry of ETF filings indicate the maturity of the industry and the potential for more widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Bloomberg Intelligence expects a batch of U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs to receive Securities and Exchange Commission approval by January. Rate resets or unforeseen ETF problems could still undermine bitcoin, but for now, company sentiment is upbeat.

MicroStrategy Inc. the largest public corporate holder of bitcoin, bought $593 million worth of the token last month, bringing its pile to about $6.5 billion. Michael Novogratz, founder of Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd. said Wednesday that bitcoin could reach its 2021 peak of nearly $69,000 a year from now.

Bitcoin rose 1 percent to $38,121 as of 2:13 p.m. in Singapore on Friday. Smaller tokens such as Ether have also risen. The three charts below summarize bitcoin’s major trends.