The price of bitcoin rose above $45,000 for the first time since Jan. 11, when US spot bitcoin ETFs began trading.
Bitcoin posted a nearly 3% daily gain to $45,391.18, according to Coin Metrics, pulling crypto-related stocks higher, even as ether floated flat.
The move by the leading cryptocurrency came after shares of New York Community Bancorp extended losses on Thursday. Concerns about US regional banks have benefited bitcoin since last year’s regional banking crisis, when investors who lost confidence in banks turned to the cryptocurrency as a hedge against uncertainty, SEEbiz reported.
Traders also point out that the accumulation of bitcoin by large investors, known as “whales”, has increased in the past two weeks, when the price of the cryptocurrency has stuck below the highs of December and January.
“What’s happening now seems to be that big investors — whales, institutions, others — are piling up assets ahead of what many believe will be a strong growth cycle by the end of the year,” said Bartosz Lipiński, CEO of crypto trading platform Cube.Exchange. “One only has to look at the number of bitcoin wallets holding more than 1,000 BTC, which has grown significantly over the past two weeks and now includes an additional 73 participants who previously did not hold such a significant amount of the cryptocurrency.”
Over the past two weeks, average daily bitcoin trading volume has fallen 29.6% compared to the previous week, JPMorgan noted in a Thursday note.
Shares of crypto exchange Coinbase jumped about 9%, while bitcoin proxy Microstrategy added 11%. In the mining group, CleanSpark and Riot Platforms advanced around 9% each, while Marathon Digital rose 13% and Iris Energy rose 19%.
