The price of Bitcoin crossed $40, 000 for the first time in 19 months on Sunday.
Ethereum also rose past $2,200, fuelled by growing expectations of US interest rate cuts and traders viewing the recent US action against crypto exchanges Binance and FTX as steps towards an imminent approval of stockmarket-traded Bitcoin funds.
Bitcoin has been heating up for some time now as it is trying to come out of the “crypto winter” and hit a high of $40,210 in Sunday’s trade, and improved to $41,414, up nearly 3.4 per cent, in Asian trades on Monday.
Bitcoin price surge
Riskier investments and other interest-rate sensitive assets, such as gold, have also rallied hard over the past few weeks as markets wager that the US Federal Reserve has finished hiking rates and will start cutting early in 2023.
Ether, the coin linked to the Ethereum blockchain network, also made a 18-month high, but both remain well below the 2021 record highs of $60,000 for Bitcoin and $4,000 for Ether respectively.
BNB coin, a token affiliated with the Binance exchange, was down about 0.1 per cent. It was the sole exception as other top-10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation marked gains.
Recently, gold futures reached a record high $2,087 after Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said interest rates are now into restrictive territory.
Lucy Hu, Senior Analyst, Metalpha, wrote in a note: “The market is expecting a rate cut in the coming year and investors are increasingly bullish on the outlook of Bitcoin ETF applications by some of the biggest names in asset management.
“This is an official statement of a bull run and the price could see more upticks in the coming weeks.”
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