The price action comes just ahead of a highly anticipated Nasdaq listing for leading U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase.
Bitcoin’s price neared its all-time high of $61,712 early Saturday while ether (ETH, +3.78%) set a new all-time high at $2,190.
According to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin price page, the leading cryptocurrency traded above $60,000 for the first time in nearly a month after spending weeks vacillating between $52,000 and the upper $50,000s. Bitcoin pulled back marginally after peaking around $60,900, though it remains above the psychological marker as of press time.
Bitcoin last hit an all-time high in mid-March, according to CoinGecko.
Meanwhile ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, came close to $2,200, just days after breaching $2,100 for the first time.
While it’s unclear if there’s a causation, the price action comes just days before leading U.S. exchange Coinbase begins trading on Nasdaq in one of the crypto industry’s most anticipated events. A sign of the maturing market, the listing will likely give Wall Street traders their most accessible bet yet on growth in the space.Some institutional investors have wasted little time. Friday, Daniel Loeb, CEO of $17 billion hedge fund Third Point revealed he was a hodler in response to a CoinDesk report. He’s hardly alone: institutional funds have flooded the markets and have been deemed at least partly responsible for the 2020-2021 rally.
Bitcoin bulls were further bolstered on Friday by the idea that an exchange-traded fund (ETF) with exposure to the digital asset space might be approved in 2021, after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) confirmed it was reviewing ETF giant WisdomTree’s application.
The regulator previously began reviewing VanEck’s ETF application last month, and another six companies have filed initial registration forms declaring their own efforts to launch a regulated bitcoin (BTC, +3.19%) investment vehicle.
The broader digital asset space has seen tremendous froth over the past few months, with investors and industry participants trading heavily in decentralized finance tools, non-fungible tokens and altcoins like doge, which hit a peak of $0.08 in February, eight times its value a month earlier.