Bitcoin Price Consolidation and Surge
Bitcoin briefly surpassed $35,000 before settling around $34,500 in U.S. trading on Monday, marking a 12% gain over 24 hours.
BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Listing Analysts attribute this sudden jump to BlackRock’s listing of its Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) as $IBTC on the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. database.
- BlackRock is prepared to seed the ETF starting from October 2023.
- This proactive stance from BlackRock indicates their readiness to begin trading upon SEC approval, bolstering optimism for approval.
Bitcoin Reaches May 2022 Levels *Bitcoin’s recent price surge has brought it back to levels last observed in May 2022, before negative events involving Terra-Luna, Three Arrows Capital, Genesis, and FTX caused its value to drop to around $15,000.
High-Level Departures at Binance Continuing a trend of high-level executives leaving Binance, the head of its U.K. operations, Jonathan Farnell, departed last month.
- Farnell also served as the CEO of Bifinity, Binance’s payment service, which was disbanded in August.
- He joined Binance in May 2021 and subsequently became the CEO of Eqonex, the holding company of crypto custodian Digivault.
Bearish Bitcoin Bets Lead to Liquidations Traders who bet against Bitcoin have incurred over $178 million in losses over the past 24 hours, as Bitcoin’s price surpassed a critical resistance level.
- Bitcoin futures represented almost 50% of the $400 million in cryptocurrency liquidations on Monday.
- Ether futures also contributed to liquidations, totaling $50 million from both long and short positions.
- Liquidations occur when exchanges forcibly close leveraged positions due to insufficient initial margin, resulting in a trader’s partial or total loss.
Investor Sentiment Turns Greedy as Fear and Greed Index Hits a High
For the first time since mid-July, the Fear and Greed Index, a tool used to gauge investor sentiment, now indicates “greed.”
- Readings surpassing 60 signify that market sentiment has shifted to a “greed” phase, while readings under 40 denote “fear.”
- The transition from “neutral” to “greed” on the index coincided with Bitcoin’s surge to a 16-month high on Monday.
- Source: CoinMarketCap