Bitcoin and Altcoin
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has surpassed $45,000 for the first time in nearly two years as the market prepares for the approval of a Bitcoin ETF in the coming days.
Bitcoin quickly surged from $42,000 on January 1st, reaching a local peak at $45,372, up over 6% in the past 24 hours and 170% in 2023, marking a new annual high.
Bitcoin’s price performance comes as the market prepares for the SEC to approve one or more of the 14 prominent applications for a Bitcoin ETF.
The last time Bitcoin traded above $45,000 was nearly 20 months ago, on April 5, 2022, before entering a prolonged bear market, witnessing prices drop to a low of $15,600.
Market commentators remain divided on the potential impact of the ETF approval on Bitcoin’s price in the short term.
An analyst from the crypto options trading platform, Greeks.live, stated that Bitcoin would not experience a significant price increase on the day of approval due to decreasing volatility in Bitcoin options.
Traders on X have a different view. Scott Melkor told his 925,000 followers that Bitcoin is currently forming a “strong upward momentum” after a month of accumulation above the $40,000 level.
Melkor predicts that Bitcoin could rise to $54,000 after SEC approval.
Meanwhile, VanEck’s advisor Gabor Gurbacs predicts that the early days of Bitcoin ETFs will be “quite disappointing,” but ultimately believes that these products will attract capital inflows worth trillions of dollars in the coming years.
On the Altcoin side, the market also surged strongly as Bitcoin reached the $45,000 mark.
Sei (SEI) was the best-performing project of the day. The Layer 1 blockchain’s native utility token optimized for digital asset trading surged over 28% in the past 24 hours and rose by 74% over the 7-day period.
Other projects in the top 100 such as WEMIX (WEMIX), The Graph (GRT), Mina (MINA), Celestia (TIA), Bonk (BONK), Filecoin (FIL), WOO Network (WOO) surged by over 10%.
Arbitrum (ARB), Stacks (STX), Lido DAO (LDO), Injective (INJ), Pepe (PEPE), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Avalanche (AVAX), Aave (AAVE), Immutable (IMX), Sui (SUI), THORChain (RUNE), Tezos (XTZ), Solana (SOL), Theta Network (THETA), Algorand (ALGO), Aptos (APT)… rose by 6-9%.
Ethereum (ETH) also surged, approaching the $2,400 level. The second-largest market-cap asset has risen by 3.5% compared to 24 hours ago and is currently trading around $2,380.
