Bitcoin Touches $25,000 For First Time Since August As 2023 Crypto Rally Continues
Bitcoin rose as much as 9% on Thursday to trade above $25,000 for the first time in six months as the crypto rally of 2023 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.
“The regulators understand that bitcoin is different, it’s not a security. It doesn’t have a centralized protocol with a small group of programmers who were in charge of it,” said bitcoin investor James Lavish.
“Having said that, it’s going to be volatile and there’s going to be another selloff, especially if we go into a recession, so while it’s great to see the price stabilize and move higher, I’d just caution people against getting too excited.”
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