Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, has entered its heydays again due to the failure of the two US regional banks, and dampening consumer confidence in traditional banking systems. The US Federal Reserve pause on rate hikes has also played a part in BTC soaring again.
According to coinmarketcap.com, the price of Bitcoin was at $27,572 at 1 pm on March 21, 2023. BTC had started the year at $16,845 and surpassed the $28,000 mark on Monday, March 20, 2022, for the first time since June 2022.
At present, BTC dominates the cryptocurrency market with a share of 46.4 per cent of the total market capitalisation. Bitcoin’s market dominance rose 0.55 per cent over the previous day. The price of Bitcoin has soared nearly 40 per cent since the Silicon Valley Bank collapse on March 10, 2023.
Though Bitcoin is showing its best performance after the FTX collapse, it is far away from its all-time high of $66,002 on October 21, 2021.
The total crypto market volume was at $71.75 billion over the last 24 hours, up 0.72 per cent over the previous day, while the global crypto market cap was at $1.16 trillion, up 0.36 per cent over the previous day. Much of the growth in crypto market cap over last few days was driven by Bitcoin.
In the last one month, BTC dipped into the red on February 21, 2023, and to its lowest point in recent times, to $19,762 on March 10, 2023.
On March 14, 2023, Bitcoin recovered into the green and reached a high of $28,401 on March 20. From mid-June of 2022, the $28,401 point on Monday was the highest price recorded by Bitcoin.
The current rally in Bitcoin is being driven by the importance given by retail and institutional investors to decentralised finance in the global financial system, especially since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate. These banks were crypto-friendly, and their failures prompted money to directly flow into the crypto ecosystem.
An additional reason for the rise of the crypto market is the official announcement that the Ethereum Shanghai hard fork update will be launched by April 12, 2023.
For the first time ever, users of the Ethereum cryptocurrency network will be able to access staked ether (ETH) funds through this update. The staked ether token (stETH) represents an Ethereum token that is deposited or staked to support Blockchain operations.
Historically, Bitcoin has shown better performance at times of global economic uncertainties. When the global economy shut down due to COVID-19 in 2020, Bitcoin showed a whopping rise of over 400 per cent.
