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Bitcoin jumped earlier in the week and moved even closer to its all-time high after the rally took a breather over the weekend.
The flagship cryptocurrency was last up 9% at $68,635.20, according to Coin Metrics. At times it rose to as high as $68,848.62, its highest level since November 2021 – the last time it hit a record. ether rose more than 5% to $3,650.59.
Both coins had their best week in nearly a year – Bitcoin up about 21% and Ether up 16% – but paused their run over the weekend as the market saw two days of heavy outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC ) had digested ), which were offset by inflows into other “newborn” Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
“With the launch of these nine new ETFs, the big moves now tend to occur during the normal trading week rather than on weekends,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto exchange Nexo.
“What we are seeing today … could well be a repeat of early last week, when Bitcoin rose by $10,000 in a matter of days,” he added. “We are in an environment where a day or two of sideways consolidation due to insatiable demand for these new spot ETFs could precede an explosive price move.”
Bitcoin has overtaken other crypto tokens, particularly meme coins. Dogecoin rose by 32% while the Shiba Inu coin skyrocketed by 95%. Analysts see this as evidence that retail investors, who were largely absent during the recent crypto rally, are starting to return to the crypto market. Weekly trading volume of meme tokens rose last week to its highest level since late 2021, according to crypto data provider Kaiko.
Some crypto stocks rode the Bitcoin wave, such as Coinbase And Microstrategy, which rose 11% and 23.6%, respectively. However, miners held off the rally, giving up earlier gains, as the short-term effect of the upcoming April halving – when mining companies' revenues will be cut – weighed on investors. CleanSpark And Cipher mining fell by more than 7% each Iris energy And Marathon Digital each down by almost 5% and Riot Platforms fell by almost 7%.
Some analysts have suggested that while Bitcoin could continue to rise in the short term, it could cool off in the next few weeks as unrealized profit margins approach extreme levels. According to CryptoQuant, the short-term realized price of Bitcoin is just under $42,700.
Nevertheless, long-term investors are confident that the combination of increasing demand for Bitcoin from the new US ETFs and an expected lower supply after the April halving will drive the Bitcoin price to a new all-time high.
Crypto also received a bid from the stock market, where the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite hit an all-time high on Friday, becoming the last of the major stock indexes to hit a record close this year.
David Duong, head of institutional research at Coinbase, said that while March could be a sideways month for Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is benefiting from a productivity boom driven by AI and blockchain technology that he expects to continue.
Correction: According to CryptoQuant, the short-term realized price of Bitcoin is just under $42,700. An earlier version of this story omitted the duration of the realized price statistics.
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