Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, surged past $57,000 per coin for the first time since November 2021 earlier this week. This cryptocurrency reached an all-time high of $68,700 per coin in November 2021.
At the time of writing, the value of this cryptocurrency has slightly dropped, valued at roughly $56,000 per coin. Interestingly, Bitcoin was trading below $51,000 on February 26. However, during US trading hours, there was a sharp rise in its value, pushing the cryptocurrency’s price up by nearly $7,000 and resulting in a daily gain of over 10%. Amid this development, Bitcoin’s market capitalization exceeded $1.1 trillion.
According to data from the Coinglass service, which tracks transactions on major cryptocurrency exchanges, more than 80 thousand traders had more than 80 thousand short Bitcoin positions forcibly closed in a day, totalling $187 million. This data suggests that traders anticipating a decline in Bitcoin’s value lacked the funds to secure their margin positions. It is noteworthy that the trading volume in Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) in the US exceeded $2.4 billion in one day, marking a record since the launch of the ETFs in January this year. Of this total, over $1.3 billion represented ETFs by BlackRock.
The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Ethereum, also reached a yearly high. Currently, Ethereum is trading above $3,200 per coin; its market cap has exceeded $386 million. It is worth noting that the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap saw an average daily increase ranging between 3 and 6 percent.
