On Tuesday, the flagship cryptocurrency jumped in price again due to the high demand for bitcoin ETFs, updating its historical record to $69.2 thousand (in November 2021, the coin was valued at $68.9 thousand).
As noted by Reuters, since October 2023, bitcoin has grown by a total of 160%, with 44% of this growth occurring in February of this year — such a steady «move» coin is in sharp contrast to 2022, which was in a protracted crypto winter and was marked by a number of bankruptcies and scandals.
Much of the credit for the current growth goes to the fact that in the United States, in early 2024, the approved the Bitcoin ETF — exchange-traded funds that track cryptocurrencies using futures contracts on the stock exchange (according to LSEG, net inflows to the 10 largest bitcoin ETFs reached $2.17 billion). In addition to this, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general have received a boost from the prospect of lower interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, which often encourages investors to allocate capital to assets with higher yields or greater volatility.
Analysts say that bitcoin also benefited from April’s so-called halving, a process that occurs every four years during which the rate of token issuance, as well as rewards to miners, are cut in half. The supply of bitcoins is limited to 21 million, of which 19 million have already been mined.