Bitcoin Surges Above $31.3K in a Year, a New High.
Bitcoin’s mid-June surge continued on Friday morning (ET). It surged to an all-time high of $31,000 before falling below that level later in the day.
According to AskFX Indexes, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap recently traded at $30,894, up 2.1% over the past 24 hours. It’s up about 20% in the last week.
BTC was last traded in June 2022 for $31,050. It briefly surpassed $31,000 on April 10.
Bitcoin surged earlier this week after BlackRock, the world’s largest wealth manager, applied for a spot ETF and two other financial giants, Invesco and WisdomTree, submitted their applications for similar products.
Investors, rocked by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuits against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase earlier this month, have been heartened by the ETF filings, which underscore the commitment of major institutions to expand their presence in digital assets.
Strahinja Savi, head of data analytics at Toronto’s crypto platform FRNT, wrote in a Telegram message that a sustained surge above $31,000 would signal a new phase where market participants will start to reevaluate previous regulatory fears . “Despite the seemingly antagonistic rhetoric of some regulators, the bitcoin spot ETF filing has reinforced the view that institutions are still interested in crypto.” assets, and Bitcoin’s surge above $30,000 seems to confirm that.”
K33 Research’s weekly newsletter, published on Friday, noted that Blackrock’s Bitcoin ETF filing exceeded expectations for had sparked an institutionally driven price rally.
The majority of major cryptos have followed Bitcoin’s uptrend. Ether, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market value, is up 0.5% since the same time Thursday, trading at $1,901. ETH regained $1,900 earlier this week for the first time since early June. Litecoin, the Avalanche blockchain’s native cryptocurrency, and DOT (the token for Polkadot’s smart contracts platform) are each up more than 5% over the past few days. AVAX, a native cryptocurrency on the Avalanche blockchain, is up nearly 4%.
Recently, the AskFX Market Index (a measure of performance in crypto markets) is up more than 2%.
Cryptos continue to decouple from stock markets. They collapsed on Friday and experienced their first losing weeks after a more than month-long streak of gains. Investors were concerned about the possibility of an economic recession and further rate hikes in 2023. The Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500, which are heavily tech-heavy, fell 0.9%, 0.6% and 0.5%, respectively.
The Bank of England hiked interest rates by a restrictive 50% basis points to stem UK inflation, which is still stubbornly high at 8.7%. In recent weeks, the Federal Reserve and other central banks have adopted a more dovish stance, although Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other bank officials have reiterated their intention to resume rate hikes, which tend to weigh heavily on digital assets.
Mark Connors of Canadian digital asset manager 3iQ sent a text message to AskFX expressing cautious optimism about the long-term potential impact of ETF applications.
“Sentiment in the digital space has shifted as markets now focus on the Binance and SEC complaint rather than betting that the plethora of BTC ETF files will fuel future demand…sooner or later” , wrote Connors.
