Bitcoin pushes toward record as futures ETF poised to debut
BNN Bloomberg
Bitcoin rallied early Monday after falling over the weekend, ahead of an anticipated U.S. exchange-traded fund approval.
Bitcoin resumed its climb toward all-time highs with asset manager ProShares poised to launch the first Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund.
The largest cryptocurrency gained as much as 5.5 per cent and was trading at about US$61,032 as of 7:44 a.m. in New York. It fell both Saturday and Sunday to nearly US$59,000. Bloomberg News reported Thursday that the SEC isn’t likely to block the products from starting to trade this week, according to people familiar with the matter.
“We plan to launch the first Bitcoin-linked ETF on Tuesday on the NYSE,” Michael Sapir, chief executive officer of ProShares, said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Bitcoin has more than doubled since the start of the year, though the ride has been volatile as the market confronts narratives from increasing institutional adoption and greater asset-class maturity to a crypto crackdown in China and concerns about energy usage. Other cryptos also gained Monday, with second-largest Ether up about 3.4 per cent. Binance Coin has retaken the third spot in crypto market value after a 17 per cent rally in the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.com.
The technical setup for Bitcoin in its latest rally is a concern for Rick Bensignor, the president of Bensignor Investment Strategies and a former strategist at Morgan Stanley. Depending on Monday’s price action it might “make me think twice about buying Bitcoin now, especially as it’s against all-time highs,” he said in a note Monday.
