Bitcoin Hits $50,000 Milestone for the First Time Since 2021 Amid ETF Demand Surge

On Monday, Bitcoin reached $50,000 for the first time in over two years.

Early on Monday, the token reached a record high of $50,334, which is the highest amount since December 2021 and represents a 15% rise from the year’s beginning. Investor optimism for bitcoin ETFs, which were initially authorized by the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, has been the main driver of the increase.

″$50,000 is a significant milestone for bitcoin after the launch of spot ETFs last month not only failed to elicit a move above this key psychological level but led to a selloff and some deep soul searching about these new bitcoin products,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto services firm Nexo.

One of the key draws for speculators has always been the wildly volatile prices that have been witnessed since the launch of Bitcoin more than ten years ago. Originally marketed as a rival to the established financial system, the most recent surge has been propelled by the hope that more public acceptance is being brought about by the US government’s licensing of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds last month.

Since the implosion of stablecoin TerraUSD in May 2022, which started a chain of events that eventually contributed to the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange in November 2022, Bitcoin has fully recovered all of its losses.

On Monday, shares of businesses involved in cryptocurrencies increased as well. MicroStrategy Inc., a Bitcoin proxy, surged 11%, Coinbase Global Inc., a trading platform, up 3.8%, and Marathon Digital Holdings Inc., a miner, increased 14.2%.

Nine US-based spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds made their debut, while the over ten-year-old Grayscale Bitcoin Trust became an ETF on the same day. The token’s investor base is expected to grow as a result of ETF accessibility. Over $9 billion has been drawn to the new funds thus far, while the Grayscale fund’s over $6 billion outflow since its conversion seems to be waning.