Bitcoin surged past $29,900 on Wednesday after software developer and bitcoin whale MicroStrategy submitted a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to sell up to $750 million in stock with the intent of using the capital to purchase more BTC. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading at $29,900, a more than 2% gain over the past four hours and up more than 4.6% since dipping to $28,574 on Tuesday.
The increase came after a market downturn stemming from the chaos following a Curve exploit over the weekend. CRV was recently up 7.6% from Tuesday, same time, to trade just below 60 cents. CRV rose more than 20% on Tuesday at one point after falling below 50 cents. The increase came after Sun purchased more than $2 million worth of the token and pledged additional assistance through a liquidity pool on the Tron network.
Ether (ETH), the second largest crypto in market value, was recently changing hands at $1,873, off 0.6% from Tuesday same time. SOL and ADA, the tokens of smart contracts platforms Solana and Cardano, were each more than a percentage point to the green. Ripple’s XRP was up 1%, despite a court ruling casting doubt on its partial legal win against the SEC last month.
The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of crypto markets performance, was up 1.3%. Richard Mico, the U.S. CEO of payment-and-compliance infrastructure provider BanxaI, noted that investors were buying up bitcoin’s recent dips below $29,000…pretty quickly, a sign that buyers are accumulating in expectation of the SEC approving one of the recent spot BTC ETF applications.
Major U.S. equity indexes were largely down with the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 off 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively. Mark Connors, the head of research at Canadian digital asset manager 3iQ, wrote that the recent shift in market sentiment was NOT limited to digital assets, as equities took a breather.
Our bellwether cross asset correlation metric hit a 20-year high as bonds and equities sold off, Connors wrote. Looking forward, we will monitor for any sharp reversal from this historically high correlation – as that has often signaled a risk reversal.
MicroStrategy’s filing and the subsequent jump in bitcoin’s price is indicative of the growing interest in the cryptocurrency. Investors are buying up bitcoin’s dips below $29,000, signaling that they are expecting the SEC to approve one of the recent spot BTC ETF applications. Major U.S. equity indexes were largely down, with the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 off 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively. This shift in market sentiment was not limited to digital assets, as bonds and equities sold off, pushing the bellwether cross asset correlation metric to a 20-year high.