Bitcoin hits $50K for first time since December 2021
BTC
$50,117 surged on Feb. 12, reaching its highest level since December 2021 as market participants’ excitement over spot BTC exchange-traded fund inflows and the upcoming BTC supply halving in April lifted investors’ expectations.
At the time of publishing, Bitcoin price reached a session high of $50,188, having gained more than 4%, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.
With the $50,000 level achieved roughly two months before the Bitcoin halving, investors anticipate BTC price to make a stab at the $69,800 all-time high, last seen on Nov. 8, 2021.
The asset, which this time last year was priced at less than $22,000, is up by more than 15% over the past seven days. Over the past month, it has risen by 16%.
BTC looked like it was having a slow year after the approval of several long-awaited exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January.
The investment vehicles got the green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission after a decade of denials, but the price of Bitcoin dipped. This was down to one of the biggest fund managers, Grayscale, selling coins after investors wanted to redeem their shares. That pressure seems to have eased now, though, and money is flooding back into the space.
BTC's rise, according to analysts, is down to big investors hoarding the cryptocurrency and a renewed interest from Wall Street in the tech industry.
The tech-heavily Nasdaq today is up 0.34% today; BTC previously was heavily correlated to stocks.
Bitcoin touched its all-time high of $69,044 back in November 2021, during the last bull run. At the time, the global cryptocurrency market capitalization briefly surpassed $3 trillion. At the time of writing, the global market cap is sitting at $1.9 trillion.
Since last week, analysts have been saying that onchain data points to Bitcoin likely making a big climb. All this comes ahead of the Bitcoin halving in April, which will see the rewards paid out to Bitcoin miners reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
