Bitcoin Blasts Past $31,000 as Optimism for BTC Spot ETF Surges

The last time the asset was this high was back in July.

Mat Di Salvo2 min read

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Bitcoin soared past $31,000 per coin on Monday as hype around a spot Bitcoin ETF led to increased optimism in the space.

The largest digital asset by market cap was priced at $31,284 at the time of writing, a rise of nearly 5% in 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The coin is up more than 11% in the past seven days.

Bitcoin was last this high in mid-July. It has since dropped as low as $25,133 but largely hovered between $26,000 and $27,000 per coin.

Bulls have flooded the space as talk about a spot Bitcoin ETF has investors hopeful that the long-awaited crypto product will soon get approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A Monday CoinShares report showed that institutional investors are pouring money into the space; JPMorgan analysts said last week that a spot Bitcoin ETF could be approved by Christmas.

High-profile investment firms that have applied to the SEC for a spot ETF are fine tuning their applications in the hope that the regulator will give them the green light.

So two things caught my eye from the latest iShares (Blackrock) S-1 amendment:
– They've obtained a CUSIP in prep for a launch
– They may be looking to seed with cash this month (which is earlier than I would've thought, but may be nothing) pic.twitter.com/lMDaKxiIbB

— Scott Johnsson (@SGJohnsson) October 23, 2023

Investors have been hungry for a spot Bitcoin ETF for the best part of a decade but Wall Street's biggest regulator experts say has denied applications for such a product, mostly citing the potential for market manipulation as one of the main reasons.

But analysts are now more optimistic than ever before: BlackRock, world’s biggest fund manager, applied for a Bitcoin ETF of its own. Not long after, manager Grayscale scored a victory against the SEC when a federal judge sided with the firm over its application to convert its flagship Bitcoin fund into an ETF.

The rest of the crypto market is up, too. Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency, is up by over 3% in the past day, trading for $1,685. While Dogecoin, the 10th largest, is up by more than 5%, trading hands for $0.06.

Bitcoin is up 88% since the start of the year, when on January 1 it was trading hands for $16,615. But it is still way below—by 55%—its November 2021 all-time high of $69,044.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.