Bitcoin price surged past $20,000 threshold as investors regained their appetite for riskier assets
Bitcoin price surged past the psychologically critical $20,000 threshold. The largest cryptocurrency by market value recently changed hands at $20,198, up more than 4% over the last 24 hours. Bitcoin last topped this level on Oct. 6.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart | Source: TradingView
Bitcoin Price Tops $20K, Ether Surges to Its Highest Point Since the Merge
Bitcoin took a rare trip upward. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading at about $20,300, up nearly 5% over the past 24 hours as chronically risk-averse investors drew encouragement from several big brands’ third-quarter earnings reports.
“An Ethereum whale wallet that had not been active for 6+ years woke up today & moved 22.2M worth of ETH to an empty wallet. ETH’s price is +8.1% since this transaction, briefly jumping over $1,500 for the 1st time since the Merge 6 weeks ago”, Santiment reported.
Ether was even more buoyant, sprinting past $1,500, up more than 11% from Monday, the same time, and its highest level since the Merge. The technological overhaul of the Ethereum blockchain on Sept. 15 shifted the protocol from proof-of-work to more energy-efficient proof-of-stake.
This comes as the U.K.’s House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament, voted to regulate crypto assets as financial instruments on Tuesday as part of the proposed Financial Services and Markets Bill. The bill now goes to the House of Lords, the upper house, for a vote before becoming law. This comes as Rishi Sunak became the country’s new Prime Minister on Monday and has a record of comments supportive of cryptocurrency when he served as finance minister.
“Ethereum has surged to $1,415 on a breakout Tuesday for crypto. The Dollar value has dropped fairly notably today, and its growth coming to an end (or at least a pause) would be a key component to the next breakout of cryptocurrency market caps”, Santiment added.
Other major altcoins were solidly in the green, with ADA and SOL rising more than 13% and 11%, respectively. UNI, the native token of the Uniswap decentralized exchange, recently jumped more than 8%. One observer said that Polygon’s MATIC token had cleared daily cloud resistance and its 200-day moving average in a short-term bullish development. MATIC recently also broke above a trendline connecting the August and September highs, confirming a bullish breakout.
In recent weeks, the historically high-volatility bitcoin market has been relatively stable, hovering just above $19,000. Investors remain focused on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s ongoing efforts to tame inflation without casting the economy into recession. Last week, they received some encouragement from faint signs the Federal Reserve would hike rates less aggressively early next year than its current diet of 75 basis point increases.
Read more:
- Long-Term Holders Are Persistent In Their ‘Hodling’ Behavior And Currently Own Over 75% Of All Bitcoin In Existence
- Is Bitcoin Price Finally On The Verge Of A Much-Awaited Comeback?
- Bitcoin Price Spent Another Day Comfortably Perched Above $19,000 And Well Within The Narrow Range It Has Held For More Than A Month