A near 8% surge in the price of Bitcoin (BTC) in the past seven days has seen its market capitalization jump by more than $50 billion to above $700 billion for the first time in seventeen months.
The cryptocurrency’s market cap was last around $729 billion, corresponding to a BTC price of around $37,300, its highest level since prior to the collapse of the Terra blockchain in May 2022.
Bitcoin has pumped up a stunning 36% in the last 30 days from its October lows under $27,000, largely as a result of a surge in institutional interest in the cryptocurrency ahead of widely expected spot Bitcoin ETF approvals in the US by early 2024.
As per investment advisory firm ByteTree, the holdings of Bitcoin investment funds just hit a new all-time high of 863,434 BTC tokens.
ByteTree’s founder Charlie Morris commented that its little surprise that “the price has been so strong of late”.
The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US is expected to open the door to substantial capital inflows from institutions as they begin allocating a portion of client wealth to BTC, which is expected to act as a strong tailwind for the price, hence the recent pump, which has been driven by front-runners attempting to get in ahead of all of these institutional inflows.
News that BlackRock is also making moves to set up a spot Ethereum ETF in the US took some of the shine off of Bitcoin’s rally this week as it neared $38,000.
Perhaps that because some investors had been buying it on the premise that it would be the only crypto to gain ETF approval in the US next year.
Well, if spot Ethereum ETFs are also on the horizon, that makes spot Bitcoin ETFs a tad less special, hence why some investors may have sold their BTC and bought ETH on the news on Thursday.
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