Bitcoin hits 6-month high, up 55% from FTX-fueled low
Top line
Bitcoin’s rally to nearly $25,000 this week caps a two-month rally for the cryptocurrency, as the prominent coin shrugs off a string of bad news for the crypto industry.
Bitcoin is back to pre-FTX collapse levels.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Keywords
Bitcoin rose nearly 12% on Wednesday to as high as $24,770, its highest level since August 15, 2022, before stabilizing at around $24,400 early Thursday.
The largest crypto token is now up more than 55% since its November low of $15,600 as the dramatic collapse of stalwart exchange FTX capped a series of high-profile bankruptcies among major industry players.
The latest resurgence comes even as regulators issued a series of crypto-related crackdowns, as the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule to make it harder for fund managers to invest in crypto and shut down the exchange’s Kraken betting program, while New York authorities ordered crypto bank Paxos to quit to mint binance stablecoin.
Bitcoin is still down more than 65% from its all-time high of around $68,000 in November 2021.
Decisive quote
“The current regulatory environment certainly looks like a headwind for the crypto market,” Bitcoin Bank analyst Yuya Hasegawa told CNBC. Hasegaqa noted that regulators’ treatment of bitcoin as a commodity, not a value, largely shields it from the impact of a flurry of enforcement actions, which is why “bitcoin’s market dominance is on the rise.”
Key background
Bitcoin’s 47% gain so far this year is outpacing the S&P 500’s 7% rally as investors return to higher-risk investments as the Federal Reserve slows the pace of rate hikes. The combined market capitalization of all crypto tokens is $1.2 trillion, according to CoinGecko, and surpassed $1 trillion in January for the first time in two months. Bitcoin’s market cap of $472 billion exceeds the market cap of Meta, UnitedHealth and JPMorgan Chase. In addition to FTX, one-time major crypto players BlockFi, Celsius, Genesis, Three Arrows Capital and Voyager have filed for bankruptcy in recent months.
Tangent
Meme tokens dogecoin and the Shiba Inu received more high-profile support this week from the world’s second-richest man and self-proclaimed “Dogefather” Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO wore a Shiba Inu T-shirt to the Super Bowl, joked about talking about dogecoin with fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch and tweeted a meme of a Shiba Inu succeeding him as Twitter boss on Tuesday. Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are up 30% and 4% respectively since late Sunday, and the dog coins are the 10th and 15th largest digital assets by market capitalization, according to Forbes‘ tracker.
Further reading
Gary Gensler’s Crypto Crusade Gets a Major Assist from NYDFS (Forbes)
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