Bitcoin set a new record high yesterday, briefly jumping past $69,000 — topping November 2021’s all-time peak — before falling back down to about $62,000. The rally was fueled by investors pouring money into US spot exchange-traded crypto products and the prospect that global interest rates may fall.
Despite the volatile asset falling about 7% after the rally, the price of Bitcoin is still up more than 175% from one year ago.
Why So Much Interest in Bitcoin Again?
Investor interest in Bitcoin has increased since the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved 11 spot bitcoin ETFs in late January, which allowed more traditional investors to get in on the action. The move also let big-name investors like Fidelity and BlackRock buy and sell groups of assets. And so far, these ETFs have done better than most analysts predicted.
The total market cap for spot Bitcoin ETF products is $53.7 billion, according to Blockworks data. Black Rock’s alone passed $10 billion last week, which is what one analyst predicted the whole market would achieve in its first year.
It’s also almost time for the Bitcoin “halving,” which is a piece of code that cuts how much Bitcoin miners get rewarded in half every four years, in order to control the amount in circulation. Historically, the halving has driven up demand and price.
Memecoins like doge and shiba inu — and even some NFTs — are rallying, too. Despite predictions that the FTX demise would be the industry’s kiss of death, crypto might just be too big to fail.
Related: The Pros and Cons of Adding Cryptocurrency to Your Portfolio
Get instructions on how to enable our Flash News Briefing skill to your Amazon devices:
