Bitcoin Surges Past $40,000 for First Time Since April 2022

Bitcoin breached the $40,000 mark for the first time in 18 months following dovish comments from the Federal Reserve and continued optimism about a potential spot Bitcoin ETF approval in January 2024.

Bitcoin surpassed a critical mark of $40,000 late on Sunday, after resisting a move past the resistance level several times over the last few days. 

The market leading digital currency was up 2% over the last 24 hours, trading around $40,100 at the time of writing. Meanwhile, Ethereum was trading around $2,200 after posting similar gains over the same period.

While this rally was hardly comparable to some of the larger single-day moves seen in the crypto space, it led to more than $100 million worth of liquidations over the last 24 hours, the majority of which were short positions.

Data from CoinGlass shows that $67 million worth of short positions were liquidated, with $29.3 million alone in Bitcoin.

The rally is also important from a psychological point of view, with Bitcoin now trading at levels last seen 18 months ago in April 2022. The digital asset is up 143% in 2023 alone and has seen an additional $500 billion added to its market capitalization.

Market participants attributed the price action to more dovish comments from the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signalling on Friday that another rate hike wasn’t currently on the cards. 

The optimism around a spot Bitcoin ETF being approved in January was likely another driving force behind the rally. In an interview with Unchained last week, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart delved into all the signs that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would approve the list of applications en masse. 

It’s very likely we are on the eve of a #Bitcoin spot ETF.

The first commodity ETF was SPDR Gold Trust. It provided a simple way for investors to access gold in their portfolio. When it launched gold went on to an 8 year rally with no single down year between 2005 – 2012. pic.twitter.com/UjAXlSiccW

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) December 4, 2023