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Bitcoin (BTC-USD) on Friday was on track to end the week about 0.5% lower, with the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization paring back a chunk of its weekly losses on optimism over BlackRock's (BLK) filing for a bitcoin ETF.
The world's largest asset manager on Thursday filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to establish a spot bitcoin ETF, to be known as the iShares Bitcoin Trust. The filing named Coinbase (COIN) as the custodian for the ETF's holdings. If approved, it would be the first publicly traded spot bitcoin ETF in the country.
The news appeared like a shot in the arm to bitcoin (BTC-USD), sending it up nearly 3% on Friday. Other cryptocurrencies rose, with ethereum (ETH-USD) also gaining around 3%.
Earlier on Thursday, bitcoin (BTC-USD) had slumped to a three-month low and was hovering around the $25K level, weighed down by continued concerns over regulatory crackdowns.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday held interest rates steady for the first time after ten consecutive increases. However, the central bank's dot plot signaled further rate hikes to come, which could have also put some pressure on cryptocurrencies. Like other risk assets, prices of digital tokens are sensitive to interest-rate moves in that they generally fare well when policymakers cut rates.
Several analysts earlier this week weighed in with their opinions on the implications of the central bank’s hawkish pause for crypto-market investors.
Cryptocurrencies last week fell after the SEC issued back-to-back lawsuits against Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, and Coinbase (COIN). In light of the regulator's continued crackdown on crypto entities, crypto traders will be interested in seeing how BlackRock (BLK) gets approval for its proposed ETF.
The total crypto market cap currently stands at $1.06T, an increase of 2.47% over Thursday, according to CoinMarketCap.
Other Notable Crypto News
According to a CoinShares report released on Monday, digital asset investment products last week logged a capital flight of $88M, representing the eighth consecutive week of outflows.
MicroStrategy (MSTR) co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor in a Bloomberg Television interview on Tuesday predicted that cryptocurrency market share was set to nearly double from current levels, citing several reasons including an "explosion in the hash rate" and "the clarity that has come out of the SEC as of late."
According to a New York Times report on Tuesday citing a hearing in Washington, a district judge has urged Binance and the SEC to confer on a possible deal that would enable the cryptocurrency exchange's purported U.S. affiliate to keep operating in the country.
Bitcoin's (BTC-USD) supply on cryptocurrency exchanges has dropped to its lowest level since February 2018 as heightened regulatory scrutiny of the space has seemingly driven traders to move their BTC to self-custody, according to on-chain data from market intelligence platform Santiment.
Mizuho Securities on Thursday said it suspected that Coinbase (COIN) was losing some retail crypto trading business to Robinhood Markets (HOOD), possibly due to COIN's higher fees on small-ticket trades.