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Crypto prices have been falling apart over the past month, with Bitcoin up nearly 25%.
Dreamstime
Bitcoin
and other cryptocurrencies rose on Wednesday, largely shaking off weakness from a wave of hacks in the digital asset space and getting back in the tracks of a recent rally that had lost steam.
The price of Bitcoin rose 2% in the past 24 hours to $23,400, reversing three straight days of decline that had marked a setback from a month-long rally that had brought the biggest digital asset from $19,000 to more than $24,000 last week . Bitcoin continues to trade at about a third of its all-time high near $69,000 reached in November 2021.
“Bitcoin has reclaimed $23,000 this morning, which is a positive sign for bulls as it means the price is above the highly watched 200 weekly moving average (which sits around $22,900),” Marcus Sotiriou, analyst at digital asset -broker GlobalBlock, wrote in a note.
“Bitcoin’s ability to stay above the 200 weekly moving average coincided with the S&P 500 falling 0.67% yesterday, which could be a sign of renewed interest in the crypto market relative to stocks,” Sotiriou added.
Bitcoin and its ilk should in theory trade independently of mainstream finance, but they have been shown to be highly correlated with other risk-sensitive assets such as stocks, and have followed
S&P 500
and
Nasdaq
lower in strong sales this year.
Beyond Bitcoin,
Ether
— the second-largest crypto — advanced 5% to nearly $1,700. Smaller cryptos, or altcoins, were higher, too
Cardano
and
Avalanche
up 3% and 5% respectively. Memecoins – originally intended as internet jokes – also got in on both
Dogecoin
and
Shiba Inu
rose 2%.
The strength in Bitcoin and other tokens came despite a series of hacks across the digital asset space, including an apparent attack on one of the largest blockchain networks,
Solana,
on Tuesday.
While Bitcoin’s correlation to stocks has proven key in dictating price movements, crypto-native weaknesses – such as the meltdown of stablecoin Terra or the collapse of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital – have also tended to weigh on token prices.
Solana was a rare fall in the crypto space on Wednesday when the token underlying that blockchain network fell 2% following a multimillion-dollar hack that appeared to be focused on the Phantom and Slop digital wallets, according to Sotiriou.
And it’s not even the first this week. Cryptocurrency bridge Nomad – which connects two blockchain networks – was hit on Monday in a $200 million attack.
Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]
