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The price of bitcoin rose to start the week, extending gains from the previous week helped by optimism about a bitcoin exchange-traded fund and a flight to safety.
Bitcoin was trading about 5% higher at $31,384.51, according to Coin Metrics, and coming off its best week since June. It has touched $30,000 at several points in 2023 but has struggled to sustain that level or move meaningfully higher with the U.S. regulatory crackdown on crypto weighing on liquidity and trading volumes.
Investors are expecting the approval of a bitcoin ETF to change that between the end of the year and the first half of 2024. Several firms have also amended their filings in the past couple weeks to address earlier concerns by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which investors are taking as a positive sign that the agency is engaging positively with the firms.
Bitcoin at $30,000
High volatility last week also led to a surge in trading activity, according to Matteo Greco, a research analyst at Fineqia.
The moves began with about $100 million in liquidations that followed a false report about the BlackRock bitcoin ETF being approved. The volatility ended with the cryptocurrency's climb to $30,000 on optimism around updated ETF filings and comments from big wigs such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones.
Greco said the cumulative daily volume on centralized exchanges between Oct. 16 and Oct. 22, based on a seven-day moving average, was the third highest it has been in the past 60 days.
Recent price action has lifted bitcoin's year-to-date return to 89.62%.
Elsewhere, ether, crypto's other blue-chip asset, was up 4.4% Monday at $1,708.60. The Solana token, which was one of the biggest winners last week, gained 4%.
Shares of the crypto services stock Coinbase rose 3.42%. MicroStrategy, which is largely viewed by investors as a bitcoin proxy, advanced 8.46%.
Bitcoin miners, which often benefit from a rise in the underlying price, were higher as well. Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms, the two biggest mining stocks, were up 12.76% and 9.02%, respectively.
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