Bitcoin Hits 6-Month High, Up 55% From FTX-Driven Low - Forbes

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Topline

Bitcoin rally to nearly $25,000 this week caps a two-month climb for the cryptocurrency, as the preeminent coin shrugs off a string of bad news for the crypto industry.

Key Facts

Bitcoin rose nearly 12% Wednesday to as high as $24,770, its highest level since August 15, 2022, before stabilizing at about $24,400 early Thursday.

The largest crypto token is now up more than 55% since its November low of $15,600 as the dramatic collapse of the stalwart exchange FTX capped a string of high-profile bankruptcies among major industry players.

The latest resurgence comes even as regulators laid out a variety of crypto-related crackdowns, as the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule to make it more difficult for fund managers to invest in crypto and shuttered the exchange Kraken’s staking program, while New York authorities ordered crypto bank Paxos to stop minting the binance stablecoin.

Bitcoin is still down more than 65% from its all-time high of about $68,000 in November 2021.

Crucial Quote

“The current regulatory environment surely looks like a headwind for the crypto market,” Bitcoin Bank analyst Yuya Hasegawa told CNBC. Hasegaqa noted that regulators’ treatment of bitcoin as a commodity, not a security, largely shields it from the impact of the flurry of enforcement actions, which is why “bitcoin’s market dominance is on the rise.”

Key Background

Bitcoin’s 47% gain year-to-date outpaces the S&P 500’s 7% rally as investors return to higher-risk investments as the Federal Reserve slows its pace of interest rate hikes. The aggregate market capitalization of all crypto tokens is $1.2 trillion, according to CoinGecko, surpassing the $1 trillion mark in January for the first time in two months. Bitcoin’s market cap of $472 billion exceeds the market value of Meta, UnitedHealth and JPMorgan Chase. In addition to FTX, one-time major crypto players BlockFi, Celsius, Genesis, Three Arrows Capital and Voyager each filed for bankruptcy in recent months.

Tangent

Meme tokens dogecoin and Shiba Inu gained this week thanks to more high-profile backing from the world’s second-wealthiest man and self-proclaimed “Dogefather” Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO wore a Shiba Inu T-shirt at the Super Bowl, joked he talked about dogecoin with fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch and tweeted a meme of a Shiba Inu who succeeded him as Twitter CEO on Tuesday. Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are up 30% and 4% since late Sunday, respectively, and the canine coins are the 10th and 15th largest digital assets by market cap, according to Forbes’ tracker.