Interesting read,
Bitcoin hit a new all-time high as markets continue to surge
If you bought one bitcoin exactly a year ago, you would have paid less than $24,000. As of Wednesday morning, that same
bitcoin would have increased in value by a staggering 200% as prices climbed back above $73,000 for the second day in a row, reaching a new all-time high around $73,700.
BlackRock’s BTC ETF reached $10 billion in record time.
Less than two months after spot BTC ETFs launched in the U.S. on January 11, BlackRock’s IBIT product — the biggest ETF after Grayscale’s GBTC — has crossed the $10 billion mark
faster than any ETF in history.
How did it accomplish this feat? Impressive inflows across the spot BTC ETF category have helped drive BTC prices up, and the combination of some $7 billion in capital flowing into IBIT and BTC’s rising values resulted in BlackRock’s fund breaking the record previously held by
Invesco’s QQQ fund, which took over a year to hit the $10 billion milestone.
2024 inflows into crypto investment products are on track to break records.
The new ETFs have transformed crypto markets by making BTC more accessible to a wide range of traders — from hedge and pension funds to individuals saving for retirement.
Here’s just one
notable example: Across all of 2021 (when crypto markets last peaked), inflows to crypto investment products totalled $10.6 billion, according to CoinShares. In a little over two months this year, inflows have already totaled $10.3 billion.
“I had high expectations, and [the new ETFs] vastly surpassed them,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart
told the Financial Times. “Demand is being pulled forward much quicker.”
U.K. regulator opens the door to crypto exchange-traded products.
As covered in a
recent edition of Bytes, regulators in other regions have been watching the U.S. BTC ETF rollout with interest.
The London Stock Exchange will start accepting applications for both BTC and ETH ETNs in the coming months.
South Korea saw crypto trading volumes race past stock trading volumes.
As crypto prices have spiked, crypto exchanges in South Korea have begun to see trade volumes
surge past those of stock exchanges.
In one example, Sunday’s crypto volumes (across the five busiest exchanges) totaled around $9 billion, while stock exchange volumes on Friday totalled $8.7 billion.
“Koreans favor high-risk, high-return investments because they experienced a rapidly growing economy,” Ki Young-Ju, founder of onchain provider CryptoQuant,
told CoinDesk. “More people are turning to such investments, with altcoins being the preferred choice over major assets like BTC or ETH.”
What do analysts think will happen next?
On Monday, Bernstein analysts
doubled down on their report from last October predicting that BTC is headed to $150,000. Specifically, the firm’s latest prediction calls for bitcoin to hit $150,000 by mid-2025, with prices breaking out following
next month’s halving event.
Cathie Wood, whose ARK Invest launched its ARK 21Shares BTC ETF in January, has
long argued that institutional capital will drive bitcoin’s price to $1 million by 2030. In an interview with the New Zealand Herald, Wood declined to specify the firm’s new target, but
said that it’s “well above that.”
