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Bitcoin's price hit a record high Tuesday, surging above $69,000 and notching past its prior peak price of $68,991.85 recorded in 2021.

After bitcoin's price sunk in 2022 amid a cryptocurrency industry crash, bitcoin's comeback began in early 2023, Bloomberg reported. But this week's record price owes a lot to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approving spot-bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in early January, which funneled more than $7 billion into various bitcoin investment products in less than two months, The New York Times reported.

These ETFs are offered by trusted financial institutions like BlackRock and Fidelity, making it more enticing for the crypto-curious to invest in bitcoin without owning any of the cryptocurrency or understanding any of the associated technology. Instead, they can just buy shares of a collection of digital assets with SEC-required protections against fraud or manipulation.