Bitcoin crossed the $69,000 mark for the first time ever as investors plowed into newly created exchange-traded crypto funds and bet that global interest rates are poised to fall this year.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency reached a high of $69,202 on Tuesday – eclipsing the all-time record of $68,999.99 that was set in November 2021 – before retreating to around $67,071 per bitcoin as of 10:40 a.m. Eastern time.
Bitcoin’s stellar performance also lifted other smaller cryptocurrencies, including ethereum, which rose more than 4% as of 11:40 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday.
Ethereum was trading at more than $3,700 on Tuesday. Since the start of the year, the digital coin was up by more than 135%.
Investor interest has increased since the Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 spot bitcoin ETFs in late January.
“There’s only so much supply … but the demand unleashed by the U.S. spot ETFs seems to be relentless,” Justin d’Anethan, head of partnerships in Asia at Keyrock, a digital asset market maker, told Reuters.
Bitcoin’s meteoric nearly 160% ascent since October, of which 44% came in February alone, marks a sharp contrast to 2022, when the market was beaten into an 18-month long crypto winter, plagued by a string of high-profile corporate bankruptcies and scandal.
In addition to demand from a wider pool of investors, bitcoin, and crypto generally, has gotten a boost from the prospect of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, which often prompts investors to divert capital into assets that are higher yielding or more volatile.
Social media platform Reddit, which on Feb. 22 filed to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, said it had invested a small portion of its excess cash reserves in bitcoin, ether and matic, the native token of the Polygon network, as a form of payment for sales of certain virtual goods.
With Post wires
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