Stephane Ouellette News

Bitcoin is climbing for a fourth consecutive week, with the digital token's price lingering just below an 18-month high of $38,000, as more investors bet that US exchange-traded funds that hold the largest cryptocurrency are on the verge of winning regulatory approval. «We are referring to the current Bitcoin rallies internally as, 'nothing for sale' rallies, said Stephane Ouellette, co-founder and chief executive of FRNT Financial. „On even the slightest positive news, whether ETF related or otherwise, Bitcoin is seeing very little resistance to the upside and is having the propensity to 'gap.' The dynamic speaks to the impressively strong price base Bitcoin has developed post-FTX.“ Bitcoin rose as much as 2.5% to $37,465 on Friday. It climbed within a hair of $38,000 on Thursday, the highest price since May 2022. That was when the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin set off a chain of failures across the sector that culminated in the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX exchange a year ago from tomorrow. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF by Jan. 10, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts. Bitcoin has surged almost 40% over the past four weeks on growing speculation that approval was imminent.

crypto trading firm Bakkt boosted expectations of a crypto-friendly regime under his incoming administration. Bitcoin, the world's biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, has more than doubled this year. It was last at $94,291 just under a record high of $94,378.

Bitcoin is climbing for a fourth consecutive week, with the digital token’s price lingering just below an 18-month high of $38,000, as more investors bet that US exchange-traded funds that hold the largest cryptocurrency are on the verge of winning regulatory approval. “We are referring to the current Bitcoin rallies internally as, ‘nothing for sale’ rallies, said Stephane Ouellette, co-founder and chief executive of FRNT Financial. “On even the slightest positive news, whether ETF related or otherwise, Bitcoin is seeing very little resistance to the upside and is having the propensity to ‘gap.’ The dynamic speaks to the impressively strong price base Bitcoin has developed post-FTX.” Bitcoin rose as much as 2.5% to $37,465 on Friday. It climbed within a hair of $38,000 on Thursday, the highest price since May 2022. That was when the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin set off a chain of failures across the sector that culminated in the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange a year ago from tomorrow. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF by Jan. 10, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts. Bitcoin has surged almost 40% over the past four weeks on growing speculation that approval was imminent.

Bitcoin has been moving less in tandem with tech stocks as sentiment around equities and cryptocurrencies diverges. The world’s largest cryptocurrency has been stuck below the $27,000 level this week, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has climbed 3.5%. The 40-day correlation coefficient for Bitcoin and the tech gauge slid to 0.19 on Friday, the lowest since April 25. A reading of 1 implies assets are moving in lockstep and minus 1 signifies the opposite. Before April, the lowest reading was in November 2021. Bitcoin and equities — particularly growth stocks — had been tied at the hip for a while as investor appetite for both boomed in an era of low interest rates. That has since changed since the start of the year, as uncertainty around the Federal Reserve’s path of rate hikes and the bank collapses in March prompted investors in each market to react differently.

The token, born as a satire of a cryptocurrency frenzy in 2013 and has no fundamental use, on Tuesday surged to 10 cents around 1500 EST from 7 cents as Elon Musk indicated in a tweet he had delivered on his promise of changing the social media app's logo to dogecoin's dog. With a market capitalization of $13.7 billion, dogecoin is now the seventh biggest cryptocurrency, according to data site CoinMarketCap.com. Its market value stood at around $10 billion before the news. Musk, who is ranked the second-richest person in the world by Forbes, is a vocal proponent of cryptocurrencies and has heavily influenced prices for dogecoin and bitcoin in the past.

Bitcoin gained the most in four months as investors show signs of renewed risk appetite following a volatile week across financial markets. The largest cryptocurrency by market value jumped as much as 10% to $40,730, the most since Oct. 1. It hasn’t been above $40,000 in more than two weeks. Ether climbed as much as 12%. Even SOL, the native currency of the Solana blockchain that has tumbled in the wake of the Wormhole project hack, surged about 12%. The top cryptocurrencies began to rally in overnight trading after strong earnings from Amazon.com Inc. bolstered confidence in technology stocks, which digital tokens have largely tracked over the past months.

With the Federal Reserve intending to withdraw stimulus from the market, riskier assets the world over have suffered. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset, lost more than 12% Friday and dropped below $36,000 to its lowest level since July. Since its peak in November, it has lost over 45% of its value. Other digital currencies have suffered just as much, if not more, with Ether and meme coins mired in similar drawdowns. Bitcoin’s decline since that November high has wiped out more than $600 billion in market value, and over $1 trillion has been lost from the aggregate crypto market. While there have been much larger percentage drawdowns for both Bitcoin and the aggregate market, this marks the second-largest ever decline in dollar terms for both, according to Bespoke Investment Group.