GEOFF BENNETT: Meantime, the world's largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, hit a record high, rising above the $100,000 mark for the first time yesterday.

And it came just hours after president-elect Donald Trump announced cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins as his pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Trump, who saw crypto as a scam just a few years back, is now a full supporter, and he took credit for the surge on his TRUTH Social platform, saying: "Congratulations, Bitcoiners.

You're welcome."

Atkins was an SEC commissioner under former President George W. Bush, and he favors lighter regulation of financial firms.

For more on crypto's soaring values and the Trump-Atkins connection to all of this, I spoke earlier today with David Yaffe-Bellany.

He's a technology reporter who covers the crypto industry for The New York Times.

Thanks for being with us.

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY, The New York Times: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, first, for the unfamiliar, explain what it means that Bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 mark.

Why is that significant?

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: It's really an important symbolic threshold for Bitcoin.

This is an investment product that started at zero in value, and over the last 15, 20 years has risen to become one of the most successful assets in the entire financial system.

And so it's really the culmination of an extraordinary roller coaster ride that's been going on for a while.

And it's a sign that this is part of the financial system now.

It's not a passing fad.

It's something that is here to stay and that really holds tremendous real-world value.

GEOFF BENNETT: Since Donald Trump's win a month ago, the price has surged by some 45 percent.

How much of this run-up has to do with him and his team?

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: It has a ton to do with Donald Trump.

I mean, it's not entirely a Trump phenomenon.

This run-up started before the election, after financial firms began offering investment products tied to Bitcoin that sort of made crypto a little bit more accessible to the public.

But Trump has really given it the most significant boost of the year.

On the campaign trail, he said he was a Bitcoin believer.

He said he would start a national Bitcoin stockpile, that the government would kind of buy Bitcoin.

And that just created a tremendous amount of investor enthusiasm in the industry.

And it's what has propelled us to the last couple of days with Bitcoin surging past 100K.

GEOFF BENNETT: And yet it wasn't that long ago that we were covering the collapse of FTX and the industry seemed to be in a slump.

What happened?

What changed so quickly?

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: Yes, absolutely.

I mean, it's worth remembering that in the relatively short history of crypto, there have already been several boom-and-bust cycles.

And so this kind of fits that pattern.

And we could well head for another bust at some point.

So I don't think people should assume that Bitcoin will stay at this high level forever, necessarily.

But what's changed is that traditional financial firms BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, have started offering exchange traded funds tied to Bitcoin.

They have basically allowed traditional investors who might not want to experiment with cryptocurrency, they have given them kind of a way to gain exposure to the Bitcoin market.

And that's driven a whole lot of new investment into the crypto world.

And that kind of tied to Donald Trump's enthusiasm for crypto, his promise to end some of the regulatory crackdowns on the industry has kind of driven the price way up.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's talk more about Paul Atkins and his connection to crypto and how his leadership of the SEC might be different than the current chair, Gary Gensler.

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: Gary Gensler has been the number one villain of the crypto industry for the last few years.

It's really kind of hard to overstate the amount of animosity that the industry feels toward him.

And that's because he's sued crypto companies, argued that they're violating securities rules, and essentially put the industry in a position where it could be driven offshore.

The expectation is that Paul Atkins will significantly deviate from that approach.

He is somebody who has worked closely with the industry and the private sector, who served on the advisory board of a crypto industry alliance.

And so crypto companies and founders are very enthusiastic right now.

They're expecting him to kind of abandon the Gensler approach and really take a much kind of lighter touch approach to the crypto industry.

GEOFF BENNETT: And what more do we know about Donald Trump's change of heart on crypto over the last year or two?

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: Yes, I mean, this is something that I think people sometimes look past, but when he was president during his first term, Trump said things like Bitcoin's a scam, it's designed to undermine the U.S. dollar.

And he really pivoted on the campaign trail this year.

The obvious explanation, I think, is that the crypto industry has been spending a huge amount of money on campaign contributions and has really become kind of a financial heavyweight in politics.

And so there was sort of a kind of opportunistic element to Trump's pivot on the issue.

But he's also said that he genuinely changed his mind about crypto, that his sons, including Barron, are super enthusiastic about the technology and that they kind of talked him into kind of being more enthusiastic about it.

GEOFF BENNETT: David Yaffe-Bellany of The New York Times, thanks for your insights this evening.

We appreciate it.

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: Thanks for having me.