Bitcoin breaks above $30,000 as investors see the end of the price rise

April 11 (Reuters) – Major cryptocurrency bitcoin breached the key $30,000 level for the first time in 10 months on Tuesday, adding to its steady gains as investors bet the U.S. Federal Reserve will soon end its aggressive monetary tightening campaign.

Bitcoin peaked at $30,438 in Asian trade and was last up 1.4% at $30,070. It is up nearly 6% since the start of the month, after rising 23% in March.

Investors are awaiting a US inflation report on Wednesday to assess the Fed’s next move after banking sector turmoil in March raised expectations that the central bank would hold back on rate hikes to ease stress on the sector.

However, Friday’s closely watched US nonfarm payrolls (NFP) report showed employers maintained a strong hiring pace in March, pointing to a still resilient economy.

“There was some expectation of a potential NFP miss on Friday and that has bolstered confidence in the CPI,” said Joseph Edwards, investment adviser at Enigma Securities.

Crypto investment products attracted $57 million in inflows last week — albeit on low volume — with most of the money focused on bitcoin, digital asset manager CoinShares said Monday. This brings digital assets back into positive territory for the year, the report showed.

“The market has done a good job of killing off all leveraged participants over the last 18 months,” said Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at Astronaut Capital, a Singapore-based crypto asset manager.

“If (bitcoin) can survive the week above $30,000, we’ll go higher.”

Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was near last week’s roughly eight-month high of $1,942.50. It was last up 0.5% at $1,920.40.

Crypto investors are eagerly awaiting a major overhaul of the Ethereum blockchain on Wednesday that is set to give them access to more than $33 billion in ether currency.

The software upgrade, called Shapella, will allow market players to redeem their “staked ether” – coins they have deposited and unlocked on the network over the past three years for interest.

While Shapella likely won’t directly drive selling pressure on ether, there could be increased volatility around the event, said Bank of America strategist Alkesh Shah.

Reporting by Rae Wee in Singapore and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Vidya Ranganathan, Jamie Freed and Devika Syamnath

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