Global Courant
Bitcoin hit a 13-month high on Thursday as the drumbeat for institutional bitcoin demand grew louder following comments from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
According to Coin Metrics, the cryptocurrency was last stable at $30,548.68. Early in the morning, it climbed to around $31,450, hitting its highest level since June 2022. However, it returned those gains after better-than-expected US jobs data increased investor concerns about interest rate developments.
The earlier move contrasted with weaker stock prices and returns. In addition, minutes from the June Federal Reserve meeting, released Wednesday, showed that most officials would support more rate hikes. Cryptocurrency liquidity has been low for several months, continuing to exaggerate both upward and downward movements.
“There is still a weight to the price,” said Noelle Acheson, an economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter. “We’ve often seen sell resistance around $31,000 in recent weeks. That will eventually be broken, but meanwhile, traditional markets seem to be entering a more risky mood — we can’t just assume bitcoin will just shake that off just yet.”
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Bitcoin (BTC) pulled back on Thursday after better-than-expected US jobs numbers.
However, sentiment among traders was high after that Black rock CEO Larry Fink gave bitcoin perhaps the biggest endorsement ever from a major institutional player. Speaking on Fox Business News Wednesday, Fink called Bitcoin “an international asset” and said it’s “not based on any particular currency, so it could be an asset that people can play as an alternative.”
Bitcoin has been on a steady rise since June 15, when BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, first applied to launch a spot bitcoin ETF. The number of coins held by institutions through trusts, ETFs, and funds has since soared, reaching its highest level in more than a year, according to CryptoQuant, and open interest for bitcoin is back at pre-FTX levels.
“Market participants are responding favorably to legacy financial institutions’ entry into bitcoin – a trend that lends further validity to an asset once believed to be a passing fad,” said Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale, whose trust bitcoin wait for the green light to convert to an ETF.
“More importantly, recent news about new entrants to bitcoin underscores the staying power of this asset class more broadly, and many investors see this as a one-time investment opportunity,” Sonnenshein added.
