(Bloomberg) — Bitcoin rose for the second straight day and marched closer to its all-time high, driven by expectations of exchange-traded funds’ robust demand at the week’s start.
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The most liquid cryptocurrency rose to as much as $64,279 – its first move above $64,000 since November 2021 — before trimming back to $63,622 as of 9:20 a.m. Singapore.
At the heart of this frenzy lies seemingly insatiable demand for the largest crypto token from the US-listed Bitcoin ETFs, which began trading on Jan. 11. Bitcoin has jumped about 186% in the last 12 months.
“Given the low liquidity over the weekend, markets are moving north in anticipation that tonight’s ETF inflows will continue and prices will continue to rally,” said Hayden Hughes, co-founder of social-trading platform Alpha Impact.
Net inflows of $7.35 billion have been invested since the debut of the US Bitcoin ETFs, offered by a batch of funds including BlackRock Inc. and Fidelity Investments.
Traders are betting on the price to soon cross the record of almost $69,000, reached during the Covid pandemic, given the ETFs’ strong demand and concern of missing out ahead of Bitcoin halving, which is expected later this year. After halving — when the reward for mining is cut in half — the supply growth of the coin could come down, adding to the demand squeeze.
“Crossing the psychological threshold of Bitcoin’s previous all-time high may take time, but it should only be considered a matter of time until we cross that level given the halving and positive sentiment,” Hughes said.
Other relatively small tokens, including Ether and Solana, also were up Monday 0.15% and 1.82% respectively.
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