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Bitcoin jumped to begin the week, edging even closer to its all-time high after the rally took a breather over the weekend.
The flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 9% at $68,635.20, in accordance with Coin Metrics. At one point, it rose to as much as $68,848.62, its highest level since November 2021 — the last time it reached a record. Ether advanced greater than 5% to $3,650.59.
Each coins are coming off their best week in almost a yr — bitcoin gained about 21% and ether 16% — but paused their run over the weekend as the market digested two days of steep outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) that were offset by inflows into other “newborn” bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
“With the birth of those nine recent ETFs the massive moves now are likely to happen through the normal trading week quite than the weekends,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto exchange Nexo.
“What we’re seeing today … might well be a rerun of early last week when bitcoin surged $10,000 within the space of a few days,” he added. “We’re in that type of environment when a day or two of sideways consolidation can precede explosive price motion due to the voracious demand of those recent spot ETFs.”
Bitcoin lifted other crypto tokens, especially meme coins. Dogecoin surged 32%, while Shiba Inu coin rocketed 95%. Analysts point to them as evidence that retail investors, who’ve been absent for much of the recent crypto rally, are beginning to return to the crypto market. Last week, meme tokens’ weekly trade volume surged to their highest level since late 2021, in accordance with crypto data provider Kaiko.
Some crypto equities rode the bitcoin wave, such as Coinbase and Microstrategy, which rose 11% and 23.6%, respectively. Miners sat the rally out, nevertheless, giving back earlier gains as the short-term effect of the upcoming halving in April — when mining firms’ revenue can be slashed — weighed on investors. CleanSpark and Cipher Mining dropped greater than 7% each, while Iris Energy and Marathon Digital each dipped nearly 5% and Riot Platforms slid almost 7%.
Some analysts have suggested that while bitcoin could keep rising within the short term, it may cool in the following few weeks, as unrealized profit margins approach extreme levels. Bitcoin’s realized price is sitting at nearly $42,700, in accordance with CryptoQuant.
Nevertheless, long-term investors are confident that the mix of accelerating demand for bitcoin through the brand new U.S. ETFs and a tighter supply expected after the April halving event will push the value of bitcoin to a recent all-time high.
Crypto has also been getting a bid from the stock market, where the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite reached an all-time high on Friday, becoming the last of the main stock indexes to hit a record close this yr.
David Duong, head of institutional research at Coinbase, said that although March could possibly be a month of sideways grinding for bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is benefiting from an AI- and blockchain technology-driven productivity boom he expects is here to remain.
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