During the last few months the cryptocurrency market has been relatively calm and without major movements. Since April, bitcoin, for example, has been in a range that went from 26,000 to 30,000 dollars without breaking any of those barriers. It is what some have already described as a new ‘crypto winter’ , but this week there has been an unexpected and quite notable rise on first week of 2024.
Bitcoin plays around with $35,000 . After weeks and months without major shocks, last Monday bitcoin suffered a rise that took the cryptocurrency to reach $31,000. In the following hours the rise continued and bitcoin surpassed 32,000, 33,000 and 34,000 dollars to exceed 35,000 dollars for a few hours. At this time, its price has dropped significantly and is around $33,800.
It has been almost 18 months since this value of bitcoin was reached. At that time, the Terra-Luna , Three Arrows Capital , Genesis and FTX debacles occurred and the cryptocurrency fell dramatically to $15,000, which many said threatened its survival.
What happened? It all comes down to an acronym: ETFs. Exchange-traded funds, which are investment funds that trade on secondary stock markets, have been trying to welcome cryptocurrencies for some time. In the US there are signs that these financial products could finally be approved, which would make investing in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies much more accessible to the general public.
As pointed out in Reuters , one of the most important proposals regarding ETFs is that of the financial giant BlackRock. Apparently this ETF was added to a list in which there are candidates for future approval. According to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which is responsible for regulating these products, that does not mean that it will finally be approved as an ETF. Be that as it may, this discovery significantly encouraged the situation of bitcoin and, just after, the rest of the cryptocurrencies.
As soon as it came as it left . Shortly after this appearance was discovered, the DTCC ended up eliminating this BlackRock ETF from its list of potential candidates for approval, something that caused an immediate drop in bitcoin of 3% compared to those maximum levels from a few hours before.
