Fake rumors that the SEC had approved a spot Bitcoin ETF that surfaced earlier on Monday triggered a short-lived pump in the crypto market, with Bitcoin (BTC) briefly reaching as high as $30,000.
As it became obvious that the reports were fake news, the entire almost entirely reversed, although Bitcoin was last still trading higher by more than 5% in the last 24 hours in the mid-$28,000s, as per CoinGecko.
While the SEC hasn’t yet approved a spot Bitcoin ETF, market participants remain highly optimistic that approvals are coming in the months ahead in wake of the SEC’s decision not to appeal a legal loss it sustained in a lawsuit with Grayscale last week.
Back in August, a judge ruled that the SEC unfairly rejected Grayscale’s application to transform its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot Bitcoin ETF, which would have a more favorable issuance/redemption mechanism for investors.
Optimism that Grayscale will soon be able to transform GBTC into a spot ETF has seen the GBTC discount to the spot value of Bitcoin shrink to its lowest level of the year thus far of under 16% as of Monday, as per ycharts.com.
That’s up from a discount of nearly 50% in late 2022.
The shrinking of this discount is a sign that market participants are increasingly betting that spot Bitcoin ETFs are coming soon, helping explain the broader market’s optimism
If Bitcoin can hold to the north of the $28,500 level on Monday, this could possible open the door to a swift run higher back to $30,000 and perhaps back towards yearly highs in the upper-$31,800s.
Other major cryptocurrencies were also trading with a positive bias on Monday, with Ether (ETH) up 2%, XRP (XRP) up 1.5%, Solana (SOL) up 8.5% and Cardano (ADA) up 2% in the last 24 hours, as per CoinGecko.
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