Bitcoin
BTCUSD,
was trading at $31,082 on Friday afternoon, after peaking earlier in the session at $31,410 or the highest level for 2023, according to CoinDesk data.
Bitcoin is up 81% since the start of the year, according to CoinDesk. Yesterday, it topped $30,000 for the first time since April. However, the cryptocurrency is still far from its peak of above $65,000 in November 2021.
The rally comes despite a month of regulatory crackdowns across the crypto industry, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission suing crypto exchange Binance and Coinbase
COIN,
Regulators alleged earlier this month that Binance was operating an illegal exchange and diverted investors’ funds into a trading entity controlled by chief executive Changpeng Zhao. The SEC also alleged that Coinbase operated its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national security exchange and broker.
However, last week, BlackRock
BLK,
the world’s largest asset manager, filed an application for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund. Following that Wisdom Tree
WT,
and Invesco
IVZ,
also re-submitted applications to start spot bitcoin ETFs, after getting rejected by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission previously for their earlier applications.
“The use case for cryptos is slowly making progress as JPMorgan has expanded their blockchain-based token to euro payments,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, in a note. “Bitcoin is hovering around the $30,000 region and traders are becoming optimistic that a path to $40,000 is forming. With a de-risking moment occurring on Wall Street, it is rather impressive how the crypto trade is holding up.”
Meanwhile, a new crypto exchange, called EDX Markets, backed by several Wall Street heavyweights such as Charles Schwab
SCHW,
Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Virtu Financial, started operations.
See: Wall Street firms double down on crypto after SEC sues Binance, Coinbase
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