Bitcoin's Blistering Rally Keeps Traders Interested
Traders are increasing their bets that Bitcoin will surpass its late 2021 peak, as the token has closed in the green for seven consecutive days.
The token's 21% increase in value over the past week is the most significant in a year. It's market cap is now $1.34 trillion, or 53.31% of the global crypto market cap of $2.52 trillion, according to Coinmarketcap data.
Multiple other tokens also continued to rise after Bitcoin's sudden increase. Yesterday, Dogecoin (DOGE), a cryptocurrency known for its meme origins, increased by almost 24% to reach $0.1948, while Ether (ETH) had a 4% rise to sit at $3,623.59. Shiba Inu (SHIB) another dog-themed memecoin, rose by over 100% overnight, while Pepe (PEPE) has continued set news all-time highs.
Traders are increasing their wagers on the possibility of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US seeing high demand, leading to the surpassing of the record price of over $69,000.
Trading of the funds commenced in January.
ETF inflows are experiencing their most successful week to date, driven by the impressive performance of the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF, which garnered $1.7 billion in only three days. The iShares Bitcoin Trust fund has reached $10 billion in assets in seven weeks, making it the fastest ETF to achieve this milestone.
The $54 billion SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) was founded in 2004 and took over two years to reach that size, a benchmark typically used to compare Bitcoin funds.
ETFs had a successful week, attracting $7.4 billion since their launch in January, despite outflows from Grayscale's fund. All four ETFs currently have assets exceeding $1 billion. BlackRock's IBIT has consistently received inflows without interruptions, while Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund has accumulated $4.5 billion since its establishment.
Seventeen percent of all money that has come into the "Newborn Nine" - a popular name for the nine new ETFs that invest directly in Bitcoin - since January 10 has gone into iShares Bitcoin Trust by BlackRock and Fidelity Investments' Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund.
Four of the other seven funds have cut their fees below those of the two leaders.
Valkyrie Investments cut its fee almost in half, from 0.49% to 0.25%, right before the SEC approved it.
After cutting its initial management charge by 10 basis points, Franklin Templeton has the lowest rate in the sector at 0.19%.
Bitcoin blast-off
This year, Bitcoin has been on a tear.
Its recent climb has been because small buyers feared they would miss out on the new ETFs. Fund managers are likely to stay split along these lines as companies try to get a bigger part of a growing asset class.
At the same time, there are signs that BlackRock is getting ahead of Fidelity to take the lead in the field.
New money poured into the New York-based company's IBIT fund on February 28 - $612 million, the most in a single day since it opened. It has been getting most of the new money for most of last month.