Bitcoin Touches $25,000 For First Time Since August As 2023 Crypto Rally Continues
Bitcoin surged as much as 9% on Thursday to trade above $25,000 for the first time in six months as the 2023 crypto rally continues.
By late Thursday morning, bitcoin (BTC-USD) was trading as high as $25,104, bringing year-to-date gains for the world’s largest cryptocurrency to north of 50%.
The latest rally in bitcoin comes after this week’s inflation data showed price pressures in the US economy are both “hot and cold.”
Between 13.-15. As of February, $112 million in bitcoin short positions were liquidated, or $84 million net of long positions, according to crypto derivatives aggregator CoinGlass.
“It was a combination of spot market buying and short liquidating that may have been late to the party and thought going short CPI was a good long-term macro trade,” said Christopher Newhouse, a crypto options trader for GSR.
In the two-day period following inflation data released last month — which also sparked a bitcoin rally — $219 million worth of bitcoin short positions were liquidated, or $95 million net of long positions.
“We’re just showing how short-term price action driven by momentum and liquidations can overcome any long-term views people have,” Newhouse added.
“We’ve had an incredibly strong rally … I’m surprised at the speed of it,” Michael Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, said on a conference call Wednesday.
“When I look at the price action, when I look at the excitement of customers who call it FOMO [is] build up, it wouldn’t surprise me if we’re at 30,000 by the end of the quarter,” Novogratz added.
As bitcoin leads crypto’s rally, all eyes are on the 200-week moving average, which is set at the $25,000 price marker according to Yahoo Finance data.
Total crypto volume across the market has risen 22% to $1.8 trillion in the past week, according to crypto data aggregator Nomics. However, trade in North America has fallen more than 15% to $64 billion during this period.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, legendary investor Charlie Munger, a longtime critic of cryptocurrencies, said of crypto trading and investing: “It’s worthless, it’s crazy, it’s not good, it will do nothing but harm, it’s anti-social to allow it .”
In recent weeks, US financial authorities have stepped up measures in the sector. In January, banking regulators issued a joint statement warning of the risks assumed by banks touching on crypto activities.
The SEC has also picked up enforcement, fining Kraken $30 million last week for its crypto betting program, the fourth action against a US crypto firm in the past six weeks.
In a hearing in the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, committee chairman Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) industry companies and asked that the committee find common ground to pass coherent legislation for crypto.
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