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Bitcoin continued its surge on Wednesday, shooting above $60,000 for the first time since November 2021.
The value of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 6% at $60,688.00, in line with Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as high as $60,734.42. It’s now sitting slightly below its all-time high of $68,982.20.
Bitcoin, 5 years
With the record in clear sight, the market is much more motivated to see that level retested. Bitcoin has soared greater than 18% this week alone, after a week-long pause of this 12 months’s rally. It’s now up greater than 40% for 2024.
Antoni Trenchev, cofounder of crypto exchange Nexo, said to expect some resistance as bitcoin nears $69,000 but that breaking through $60,000 should whet the appetite of investors who’ve sat this 12 months’s rally out – particularly retail investors. In line with JPMorgan, their interest in crypto has rebounded this month after a pause in January.
Investors expect it to set a latest record this 12 months after the launch of ETFs made the asset class more accessible to institutional investors, and with the network’s upcoming halving event, which historically has set the stage for a significant rally in the months that follow.
“We have all the time known that we’d like bitcoin to get to a spot where it’s adopted and accepted on a mainstream level and now the doors have been opened up for that to occur,” said Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group. “The economics of bitcoin dictate that it should proceed to drive higher.”
Specifically, the halving, an event mandated in the Bitcoin code, reduces the bitcoin mining reward by half with a view to limit the supply. The following halving is anticipated to happen in April, although Ryan Rasmussen, an analyst at Bitwise Asset Management, identified that because of ETFs, the demand for bitcoin is way outpacing the supply already.
“We have only seen the tip of the iceberg,” Rasmussen said, referencing the impact of ETFs. “Institutional capital remains to be getting in control with bitcoin ETFs – platform approvals, advisor education, client education – I expect rather a lot more demand remains to be under the surface and yet to be seen.”
The move gave a lift to bitcoin-related equities. Crypto exchange Coinbase saw shares rise greater than 5%, while bitcoin proxy Microstrategy jumped 8%. Popular miners CleanSpark and Marathon Digital added greater than 4% each.