BTC nears ATH
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 29th February 2024.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
Don’t invest in crypto unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.
What’s up
Flying Bitcoin Flirts With $64,000
A wild, gusting wind has grabbed hold of Bitcoin. Earlier today, Leap Day, the 29th of February, the largest crypto jumped to nearly $64K, almost within striking distance of its all-time high of $69K reached in November of 2021.
As of 7:18 a.m. (EST), BTC had pulled back to just below $63K. The spot price of BTC has surged roughly 44% in the past 30 days as new publicly traded ETFs devour a coin supply set to diminish when miner rewards get cut in half in April, part of an auto-reduction mechanism that kicks in every four years.
So-called crypto winter (most of 2022) is ancient history. Crypto spring (most of 2023) not only continues but it has taken on a life of its own, assuming the identity of an Alpine playboy set up with a ski-in/ski-out chalet and a full-time job mountaineering.
Total crypto assets have hit $2.44 trillion.
Among the Big Ten, Solana recorded the biggest gain (+15.6%). SOL got to $132 early this morning. That's a new high on the year. SOL’s surge comes amidst the wider crypto rally and, per Cointelegraph, a "scramble to buy up the Dogwifhat memecoin."
WIF's market capitalization is closing in on $800 million, making it CoinGecko's 116th-largest asset.
Looking at the Top 100, it's a green sea teeming with meme creatures splashing about, including BONK (+34% in 24 hours), DOGE (32%) and SHIB (+23%).
What's down
Just How Feverish Is This Current Rally?
Coinbase says Wednesday's hair-raising glitch has been fixed. The exchange spent the better part of yesterday assuring customers that funds were safe after technical issues caused some users to see balances of $0.00.
In a "calm down, everybody" social media post, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the platform was dealing with a large surge in traffic.
On Wednesday afternoon, with Bitcoin crossing $60,000, user reports of issues peaked (at 9,000) but later fell to negligible levels.
“Coinbase app is down,” widely followed crypto analyst Will Clemente wrote on X yesterday. “We are SO back.”
What's next
After Improbable Rise From Ash Heap, Crypto Still Has Room To Run
Crypto, to recap, crept into public consciousness (among techies at first), but fell on its face, but then came back, soared to new heights, grabbed everyone's attention only to catastrophically fail.
“And now we are seeing it rising from the ashes," said Ryan Rasmussen, a senior analyst at Bitwise Asset Management.
Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer, speaking on Yahoo Finance Live, said the boutique investment bank's baseline assumption is that "the price of BTC is going to achieve $125,000 by the end of 2025."
MicroStrategy kicked off this madcap week by declaring it had snapped up an additional 3,000 BTC, bringing its total investment to 193,000 BTC. That stash was worth nearly $12 billion as of today.
ETFs are setting daily volume records, on a daily basis. Derivatives traders are stampeding into the rally.
Coinglass pegged current open interest in the BTC futures market as totaling $25 billion. That’s a new high for outstanding futures bets, surpassing a mark last set in April 2021, said Christopher Newhouse, an analyst at Cumberland Labs.
"In the options market, the narrative is clear," Newhouse told Yahoo Finance. "People are bullish."
