Bitcoin breaks US$24,000 to reach its highest price since August when short sellers were liquidated

Bitcoin broke through the US$24,000 price ceiling for the first time in two weeks to hit its highest price since mid-August in Thursday morning trading in Asia, as investors liquidated nearly US$70 million of mostly short position bets, according to data aggregator GlassNode. Short positions, or bets that the price of Bitcoin would fall, had grown following a series of US regulatory crackdowns this month on crypto services. Ether rose with the rest of the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies, with Solana leading the gains.

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Fast facts

• Bitcoin rose 9.4% over the past 24 hours to trade at $24,318 as of 08:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, bringing its gains over the past seven days to 6%, according to CoinMarketCap data. Ethereum rose 7.5% to $1,674, a total gain of 1.4% for the week.

• Solana jumped 9.4% to $23.88, up 2.9% in the past seven days. Cardano added 8.3% to $0.41, a weekly gain of 6.1% following the successful deployment of the network’s Valentine upgrade yesterday. The upgrade aims to make it easier for developers to build cross-chain applications on the Cardano blockchain.

• BNB rose 7.1% to USD 317.39. The token remains down 3.2% after the New York Department of Financial Services told Paxos Trust Co. to stop issuing the US dollar-pegged Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin. BUSD is issued through a collaboration with Paxos and BNB’s issuer Binance Global Inc., which operates the world’s largest crypto exchange.

• Total crypto market capitalization over 24 hours rose 6.9% to $1.10 trillion, the highest since mid-August, with total trading volume up 7.9% to $63.61 billion.

• US stocks rose on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1%, the S&P 500 rose 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite Index ended the day up 0.9%.

• Wednesday’s rise follows the release the day before of January’s consumer price index, which showed that prices rose 0.5% for the month and 6.4% year-on-year. Although these figures were slightly higher than the expected monthly increase of 0.4% and annualized 6.2%, they show that inflation has followed a downward path in recent months in the world’s largest economy.

• Year-on-year CPI in December came in at 6.5% from 7.1% recorded in November, which again fell from October’s 7.7% and September’s 8.2%.

• The Fed, which has said it wants inflation back in the 2% range, has raised interest rates several times since last March to reverse the rise in inflation.

• Analysts at CME Group predict a more than 90% chance the Fed will raise interest rates by another 25 basis points at its meeting next month. US interest rates are currently at 4.5% to 4.75%, the highest in 15 years, and Fed officials have repeatedly indicated they may raise rates to as high as 5% to bring inflation back into the central bank’s target range.

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