BTC/USD: Bitcoin Spikes Above $42,000 as ETF Euphoria Adds $140B to Crypto Market

Crypto’s late-year rally overshadows traditional assets as the OG token is up 150% so far in 2023, largely in anticipation of a spot BTC ETF.

• The price of Bitcoin BTCUSD surged through the $42,000 mark on Monday, and remains well-bid in Tuesday’s early dealmaking. Crypto investors flocked to the original digital asset, pushing its price to $42,300, a 20-month high, going back to the levels before the spectacular Terra stablecoin collapse.
• Gains in cryptoland were broad-based as the entire digital-asset space is now $140B more expensive than it was just three days ago. More precisely, the market’s overall capitalization has topped $1.54tn, up from $1.4tn. Bitcoin holds a little over 52% of that valuation.
• Steering the gains, on the one hand, is the red-hot expectation that the Securities and Exchange Commission will greenlight the first US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. There is also the consensus view that the Federal Reserve is done raising interest rates and may soon start cutting to let some air in after the aggressive rate-hike campaign.