Bitcoin tops $57,000

What a difference a day makes! Bitcoin began Monday meandering modestly near $51,100. Shockingly, it's now $57,000.

The biggest digital asset took off on a dizzying skywriting adventure yesterday morning. Setting turbo engines to boost, BTC bid adieu to one cloud bank after another as it climbed throughout the day. Today’s flight path suggests BTC isn’t finished finding fresh sections of the atmosphere with which to toy.

If there's an explanation, perhaps it owes to a new disclosure by MicroStrategy that it purchased another $155 million worth of BTC, taken in joyful stride alongside a weakening dollar, plus two additional positive catalysts (ETF inflows, the halving) apparently all coming together in a potent brew.

As of today, at 7:30 a.m. (EST), BTC was $56,900 on a gain of 11.4% in 24 hours. Then it went even higher.

Joining the party was the second-largest crypto, Ethereum, as it hurtled toward $3,300, spiking by 7%.

Total crypto assets touched $2.25 trillion. April of 2022 was the last time that happened.

BTC is at a level not seen since December of 2021. The largest crypto's all-time high (of $69,044.77, per CoinGecko), came on Nov. 10, 2021.

Crypto stocks rallied. Ethereum rivals (Solana, Cardano, Avalanche) each are up between 7% and 10% in the past day. XRP gained 5%. Dogecoin's pushing a dime. Litecoin is $75 again.

And Mantle's MNT (43rd-largest coin) hit a new ATH. That was some eight hours ago. Mantle's wild ride is a whole other story.

Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Mantle early Monday saw its native MNT spike 20% in 24 hours as it cruised to a new record high.

Broader interest in Ethereum's burgeoning layer-2 ecosystem, and a host of clever network scaling efforts there within, is growing, experts told The Block.

But there's more, as it turns out. One exchange executive, Joe Caselin, head of institutional marketing at BIT, attributed Mantle’s surge to the rising popularity of its “double dose” approach to rewarding ETH stakers, offering Mantle Staked Ethereum (mETH) at double the market reference rate, resulting in an unusually high 7.2% yield. The Mantle team has "cooked up ways to take market share away from category leader Lido," Caselin told The Block.

MNT reached a high mark of about 95 cents on Monday afternoon in Asia, per The Block.

CoinGecko pegs MNT's record high at $0.9494 notched just around midnight. MNT has shed 5.2% since then.

A long-obstinate BTC resistance level, the $53K mark, fell Monday, mid-morning, triggering a breakneck race to $55K by afternoon.

That stunning move was coupled with an uptick in BTC's price premium on Coinbase compared to other exchanges, suggesting, CoinDesk said, that demand was coming from the U.S. – where shares of spot ETFs were changing hands with amplified velocity. BlackRock's IBIT, for example, yesterday recorded its heftiest day of volume since its debut, CoinDesk added, citing TradingView data.

Earlier today, BTC surpassed $57,000. Levered-up bears were getting washed out of the perpetual futures game as liquidations cascaded overnight.

We checked BTC again at 8:20 a.m. (EST). It was $57,100.

Several analysts see $58,000 as a given.

Longer-term, the iconic chart whisperer Peter Brandt, noting BTC's 15-month channel breakout, predicts the current bull market will extend into summer of 2025 with the upper band stretching toward a peak of $200K.

Brandt had previously forecast a top of $120K.

Other studies, including those based on previous halving cycles, and on technical analysis indicators, suggest “near-vertical price rallies ahead," CoinDesk said.