Bitcoin climbs to sub $45K as investors' risk appetite widens; Cardano erases some gains
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Bitcoin (BTC-USD), ethereum (ETH-USD) and a large basket of cryptocurrencies are trading in the green in early morning trading Friday as investors' risk appetite opens up.
The largest digital token by market cap, bitcoin (BTC-USD +4.6%), is rising to sub $45K and ethereum (ETH-USD +5.0%) is drifting up to $3.18K. Meanwhile, the three major U.S. stock market indices are slightly higher, with the Dow Jones (DJI) +0.2%, S&P 500 (SP500) +0.2% and Nasdaq (COMP.IND) flat. The rolling correlation between Bitcoin and the S&P 500 has broken out of its 2020 peak at the highest level ever, Chief Investment Strategist Liz Ann Sonder wrote in a Twitter post Friday.
Analyst commentary: “Bitcoin is on the verge of a major breakout as the price is on course to test the $45k, which has been a strong resistance since mid-January,” Bitbank analyst Yuya Hasegawa told Barron's. “The upper price target in the short term will be the area between $48k and the $50k psychological level. If the price fails to test the $45k resistance, it could go into a short-term correction phase and could decline to $42k,” the analyst noted.
Cryptos' upswing comes as Singapore-based Luna Foundation Guard, a foundation focused on TerraUSD (UST-USD), the fourth largest stablecoin, is said to be accumulating Bitcoin (BTC-USD) as a reserve asset, CoinDesk reported, citing unconfirmed reports. Apparently LFG, in an effort to add BTC as an additional layer of security for TerraUSD, acquired $125M worth of BTC early this week. And "they are slowly purchasing $3 billion of bitcoin from the Luna Foundation reserves," Morgan Creek Digital Partner Anthony Pompliano wrote in a blog post. "This is being done via aggressive buying on price dips," he added. Note that the purchases have not yet been confirmed, CoinDesk said.
Looking at individual cryptos, proof-of-stake blockchain Cardano (ADA-USD -2.2%) is pulling back a bit following a 30% rally in the past week alone after its inclusion in the new Grayscale fund. On Thursday, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global (COIN) expanded its staking offerings to include Cardano.
More cryptos: binance coin (BNB-USD +3.0%), ripple (XRP-USD +0.8%), terra (LUNA-USD +1.5%), solana (SOL-USD +2.7%), avalanche (AVAX-USD +1.1%), polkadot (DOT-USD +2.5%), dogecoin (DOGE-USD +1.3%), shiba inu (SHIB-USD +2.6%), polygon (MATIC-USD +2.5%), wrapped bitcoin (WBTC-USD +4.5%), litecoin (LTC-USD +4.3%), cosmos (ATOM-USD +4.3%), NEAR protocol (NEAR-USD +3.2%), chainlink (LINK-USD +2.5%), uniswap (UNI-USD +6.6%) and FTX token (FTT-USD +9.6%).
On Thursday, bitcoin jumped to $44K; ether firmly above $3K.