Surging over 16% in just two days to surpass 104 million won, Bitcoin is projected to see further gains as it evolves to serve as the foundation of the financial market, according to experts.

This morning, the price of Bitcoin reached up to 104.09 million won on the domestic cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb.

Compared to yesterday's low of 89.56 million won, this marks a sharp rally of more than 16%, pushing the price past 75,000 dollars in dollar terms as well.

Baek Hoon-jong, CEO of Smashfi, argued that contrary to pessimistic views in some quarters that Bitcoin's upward momentum has been exhausted, the price rally is only just beginning.

The basis for this argument is the "tokenization" of financial assets.

Tokenization refers to converting real-world assets like real estate or stocks into digital assets so they can be bought and sold on the blockchain.

Recently, the market for blockchain-traded assets has been expanding, encompassing not only stocks and bonds, but also stablecoins whose value is pegged to currencies like the US dollar.

CEO Baek argued that if this trend spreads going forward, Bitcoin could serve as a sort of "financial ledger" that ultimately records and settles the outcomes of various asset transactions.

This means that beyond simply trading Bitcoin as an investment asset, the Bitcoin network could also be utilized to trade other financial assets.

The logic is that as the scale of assets traded through the Bitcoin network grows, the value of the network itself will increase accordingly.

He also explained that because Bitcoin has a capped total issuance of 21 million coins, its scarcity is likely to become even more pronounced as demand increases.

Comparing it to other blockchains, CEO Baek pointed to Bitcoin's simple structure as a major strength.

However, this outlook—that Bitcoin will firmly establish itself as the ultimate settlement network for tokenized financial assets—remains an unverified claim.

With other blockchains like Ethereum and traditional financial networks also competing, how extensively Bitcoin is actually utilized as financial infrastructure is expected to be a major variable for future price trends.

Reported by Kim Minjeong | Video by Jang Yu-jin | Graphics by Lee Su-min | Produced by SBS Digital News