The price of bitcoin surged 17% on Tuesday and briefly touched $5,000, its highest price since November 2018. And bitcoin’s bump carried other cryptocurrencies higher as well.
There was not a single clear reason for the spike apart from improving sentiment.
Bitcoin had been stuck between $3,500 and $3,800 for three months, but once it broke through the $4,000 wall, the bulls came out in force. Bitcoin volume on the Binance exchange hit an all-time high on Tuesday—buying begetting more buying.
Tom Lee, an analyst with Fundstrat, sees “increasing evidence the worst is behind for crypto,” he wrote in a research note on Tuesday.
“Skeptics are on the wrong side of history.”
Reuters also points to a single “mystery order” for $100 million worth of bitcoin , spread across multiple exchanges including Coinbase and Kraken, identified by U.K. crypto broker BCB Group.
In this Feb. 7, 2018, photo, Jeff Hanzlik delivers a presentation about bitcoin at a bitcoin meet-up group at a restaurant in Hillsboro, Ore. Hanzlik, of Portland, was an early adopter of bitcoin and uses it to make purchases online and in stores. (AP Photos/Gillian Flaccus) More The bitcoin hike sent almost all the other large-cap cryptocurrencies higher , a reminder that bitcoin is “the alpha and the omega,” as CoinDesk research director Nolan Bauerle said at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit: Crypto last year.
The price of XRP is up 9%, ether up 11%, litecoin up 17%, bitcoin cash up 17%, EOS up 12%, stellar ( XLM ) up 9%, and cardano ( ADA ) up 14%.
As the popular Twitter crypto commentator @WhalePanda remarked , “Only thing that really matters for alts [“altcoins,” or smaller-cap cryptocurrencies] is the BTC price.”
Yahoo Finance’s cryptocurrency heatmap, as of April 2 at 9:25am EST. The shade of green or red represents the degree to which a cryptocurrency is trading higher or lower over the past 24 hours.
More Besides general positive sentiment, there are a few additional recent events in the bitcoin universe that could be helping the price.
Lightning Network , an off-chain rail for crypto payments, has gained big momentum in 2019 and recently hit $5 million in capacity. Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey participated in a “pass the torch” game on Twitter using Lightning , and has been publicly advocating for bitcoin at Square .
In addition, while everyone in crypto awaits the approval of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, a similar product pegged to the price of XRP launched on Switzerland’s SIX exchange this week.
And in February, JPMorgan Chase rolled out JPM Coin , an institutional token JPM will use to move value among its clients. Despite the fact that the token will be for internal use only, some still saw the move as a sign that banks are preparing to more fully embrace crypto.
If bitcoin can continue its momentum above $5,000, the bulls could drive it even higher. On the other hand, skeptics can certainly point to a number of negative recent events for bitcoin, like Cboe halting its bitcoin futures contracts just 15 months after first launching them.
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Daniel Roberts covers bitcoin and blockchain at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @ readDanwrite .
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