With the Bitcoin halving less than 25 days away, the number-one cryptocurrency is nearing its all-time high again, breaking $70,000 again after a week-long downturn.
According to CoinGecko, Bitcoin is trading at $70,561, up 9% in the last 24 hours and 5.5% over the last seven days. The last time Bitcoin was above $70,000 was March 14 before the digital asset began to slide and subsequently went on a wild ride consisting of ETF outflows, cryptocurrency exchange flash crashes, and inflation.
Earlier this month, Bitcoin dropped 3% on news that the U.S. inflation rate in February was worse than expected. Last week, a flash crash on the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange caused the price of BTC to drop 7% from $67,709 to $62,133.
Bitcoin has been riding a wave of euphoria since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the first spot Bitcoin ETFs in January. While Bitcoin's return above $70,000 may be a reason for investors to celebrate, it still remains 4.7% from its all-time high of $73,737 set on March 14.
The Bitcoin halving refers to an event approximately every four years when the amount of Bitcoin given as a reward to cryptocurrency miners is cut in half. Speculators hope that the price of Bitcoin will double, if not quadruple, after the halving event.
“I think you can't decouple the new demand for Bitcoin with the announcement of the spot ETFs,” Coinbase Asia-Pacific Managing Director John O’Loghlen told Decrypt late last week. “I think that that's a reality that sunk in and then we need to watch where does it go from here.”
While the sentiment around Bitcoin remains bullish, experts advise caution, especially if looking at past halving performance.
“As you read the fine print or Safe Harbor language on any material coming from an institutional source, the first language seen [is that] past performance is not an indicator for future success or performance,” O’Loghlen said. “So I think that's very much our approach in terms of our branding.”
The rest of the crypto market is rising alongside Bitcoin on Monday, with Ethereum jumping nearly 9% to a current price of $3,630 and Solana up almost 13% to a price above $194.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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