The world’s largest and oldest cryptocurrency reclaimed the $69,000 level Sunday, obliterating most of the week’s losses. Bitcoin’s sharp upward move comes as the network is scheduled to undergo the fourth highly-awaited rewards-halving event in a little over two weeks.
Bitcoin Touches $69K After Price Rollercoaster
According to CoinGecko data, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) soared by 5% earlier today to hit an intraday high of $69,544. The upsurge reversed a three-day trend that saw the alpha crypto fall to as low as $65,069 on April 2 before rebounding on April 4.
Bitcoin’s latest rally has predictably triggered similar movement across the whole crypto market, which has gained 2.5% over the past 24 hours. Ethereum (ETH), the industry’s second-largest crypto by market cap, jumped over 3% to hit $3,436 today, while Dogecoin (DOGE) rose 5% to $0.188, and BNB (BNB) was the best performer among the top 10 coins with a 7% leap to $600.09.
The upcoming Bitcoin halving is the network’s most anticipated halving yet. The quadrennial halving event slashes the rate at which new Bitcoins are created by half, thus reinforcing scarcity and potentially pushing the cryptocurrency’s value higher. On April 20, or 4/20, the pre-programmed code will lower the per-block reward given to miners for securing the network to 3.125 BTC from the current 6.25 BTC.
Bitcoin enjoyed astronomical rallies, setting fresh lifetime highs in the months following the past halvings, which took place in November 2012, July 2016, and May 2020.
What’s starkly different this time is that the OG crypto has broken past the previous bull market peak of around $69,000 weeks before the halving, which makes the upcoming event all the more exciting for investors and observers alike.
Another notable trend in this cycle is the surge in institutional BTC adoption. The game-changing greenlighting of U.S.-based spot Bitcoin ETFs has played a huge role in legitimizing the cryptocurrency as a mainstream asset class.
Going forward, we might just see Bitcoin retake the $73,737 all-time high posted on March 14 on its way to $100K heights.
