After a Monday morning rally that saw the price of Bitcoin shoot past $31,000, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap got a second wind hours later, surpassing $34,000 later in the day, according to data from CoinGecko.
The new benchmark set a record high for 2023, reaching values not seen since last May, triggered a torrent of BTC shorts, leading to $114 million in liquidation in the last hour—and $145 million in total across crypto assets, according to analytics firm CoinGlass.
Image: Coinglass
On leading crypto exchange Coinbase, BTC was trading at a premium closer to $35,000.
The pair of rallies to start the week have been attributed to building anticipation over the pending approval of Bitcoin spot ETF applications by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Earlier today, a Washington, D.C. judge officially ordered the SEC to take another look at a long-delayed and litigated spot Bitcoin ETF application from Grayscale, after the regulatory agency failed to respond to an earlier court inquiry.
Also today, global investment giant BlackRock updated its own application to note that it had started to take the preliminary steps needed to launch its Bitcoin spot ETF, including allocating funds and securing a ticker symbol. The moves don't guarantee an approval is coming, but they suggest confidence the SEC will eventually do so.
Crypto analysts are saying that both price spikes have pierced market resistance thresholds at $31,000 and $34,000 respectively, a bullish sign. Popular Crypto Twitter commentator Rekt Capital says the price action is likely to disprove the "Bearish Bitcoin Fractal," a pricing model that assumes price could rally to record highs before additional downside pulls it back down.
Top college football prospect Matai Tagoa’i is set to join football stars like Russell Okung, Odell Beckham Jr., and Trevor Lawrence by receiving his compensation in Bitcoin.
The linebacker will be paid part of his earnings via the Strike app after signing a “name, image, and likeness” (NIL) deal with the University of Southern California (USC).
The exact details of his package are not known, but some college football players, such as Shedeur Sanders, have received estimated payouts of up to $4....
The world’s largest asset manager BlackRock just debuted a new advertisement proselytizing the virtues of Bitcoin, but rather than cheer on the Bitcoin ETF issuer for its efforts, Bitcoiners aren’t happy.
The video, which is housed on the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) ETF page on BlackRock’s website, spends three minutes walking viewers through the evolution of money and key fundamentals of Bitcoin.
One of those fundamentals is Bitcoin’s 21 million fixed token supply.
While the video explains t...
El Salvador may have reached a deal with the International Monetary Fund that will see the tiny country scale back its Bitcoin law—but it’s still going to “HODL.” And it might even step up its BTC buys.
That’s according to Stacy Herbert, the head of El Salvador’s National Bitcoin Office, who wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) Thursday that the country may even continue buying the cryptocurrency at an “accelerated pace” going forward.
El Salvador in 2021 made Bitcoin legal tender along with...