On Tuesday, Bitcoin’s price rose to $71,000. This was due to a rise in spot purchases and new funds entering Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). People who follow cryptocurrencies discuss whether this sudden rise is the start of a new bull market or its peak.
Bitcoin is worth $1.39 trillion and is trading at $70,950 right now. It has an amazing $52.4 billion worth of trades every 24 hours.
A research expert at Fineqia International named Matteo Greco said that the recent price rise was mainly due to more people buying Bitcoin spot ETFs. This suggests that the market has more faith in the future.
Bitcoin Ends Week Up 7.8%
Bitcoin ended the week at around $66,300, up 7.8% from the week before when it ended at around $61,500. According to Greco, most of the price rises happened on Wednesday. Prices stayed the same for the rest of the week.
Interest has picked up near $60,000 after five weeks of low demand and net losses of about $1 billion. Last week, $950 million came in, the most funds that has come in since March, according to Farside Investors.
Greco said Grayscale’s GBTC fund also got $31.6 million between May 13 and May 17, the first weekly net inflow in 19 trade weeks. GBTC hadn’t changed much compared to the $17.6 billion that has left the market since January, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Since spot Bitcoin ETF inflows have started to rise and Bitcoin’s price has gone up again, Greco thinks that the attention may now move to spot Ethereum (ETH) ETFs. VanEck and ARK 21Shares filed with the SEC, and decisions are due May 23 and 24, respectively. According to Greco and other experts at Bloomberg, the SEC might not accept these products, even though they approved BTC ETFs earlier this year.
After Eric Balchunas, a senior expert at Bloomberg, said that Ethereum ETFs would be approved 75% of the time instead of 25% on May 21, the price of Ethereum went up 18%. According to Balchunas, the SEC may have sped up the approval process because of political pressure, even though the agency hasn’t usually had much to do with ETF applications.
Concerns over the liquidity of ETH’s spot and futures markets, along with its previous classification as a security by the SEC, contribute to skepticism about swift approval. If rejected, issuers would need to resubmit filings, potentially leading to approval in Q4 2024 or Q1 2025 at best. Matteo Greco, research analyst at Fineqia International
But Greco thinks the SEC might accept 19b-4 applications but delay S-1 approvals. This would give the agency more time to look into the Ethereum market and decide if ETH is a security. According to Greco, this move could benefit issuers because traditional investors still focus on Bitcoin. This means that ETH spot ETFs may not have as much of an effect on the market when they launch next week.
