Major cryptocurrencies experienced a surge on Wednesday, with the price of Bitcoin rallying over 10% to reach a new high for 2024, hitting $64,000 on Feb. 28

What Happened: The 50% price surge this month is largely attributed to investors’ anticipation of the upcoming supply halving event, which typically triggers strong upward price movement. 

The steady inflows to the newly introduced spot Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds are also believed to be influencing Bitcoin’s price action.

In the last 24 hours, over 182,243 traders faced liquidation, resulting in a total liquidation value of $751.10 million, data from CoinGlass shows.

For Bitcoin, the liquidations for long and short positions reached a total of $292.05 million, with $92.52 million in long liquidations and $199.53 million in short liquidations.

In the case of Ethereum, total liquidations amounted to $123.73 million, including $45.14 million from longs and $78.58 million from shorts. For DOGE, the markets saw a liquidation of $39.84 million, split across $9.45 million in longs and $30.39 million in shorts.

Shortly after surging to $64,000, Bitcoin’s price plummeted to $58,700 in a flash crash, attributed to a sell wall at this crucial level and the liquidation of overleveraged long positions. At the time of writing, BTC was trading above $61,000 levels.

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF IBIT (NASDAQ:IBIT) set a new record for trading volume for the third consecutive day, with over 96 million shares, equivalent to roughly $3.3 billion, exchanged, according to Nasdaq data. This surpasses Tuesday’s record of $1.35 billion and Monday’s record of $1.3 billion.

The trading volume for the ten spot BTC ETFs reached $7.7 billion, shattering the previous record of $4.7 billion set on their first trading day of Jan. 11, according to James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence on X. 

Top Gainer (24 Hour)

The global cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.26 trillion, showing a 4.97% increase in the past 24 hours.

Stocks retreated on Wednesday as investors turned their attention to an upcoming key inflation report. 

The S&P 500 edged down by 0.17%, closing at 5,069.76, while the Nasdaq Composite declined by 0.55% to 15,947.74. Additionally, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 23.39 points or 0.06%, ending at 38,949.02.

Investor focus is now directed toward the personal consumption expenditure reading for January, scheduled for release on Thursday, which serves as the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation.

The latest government data released on Wednesday reveals that last year’s fourth-quarter U.S. economic growth was slightly weaker than previously estimated. This was primarily due to a downward revision in business investment. The GDP growth was adjusted to an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the final three months of 2023, down from the initial estimate of 3.3 percent released last month.

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Analyst Notes: Cryptocurrency analyst Michael Van de Poppe said, “The Altcoin market capitalization is still lagging behind, typically occurring when Bitcoin stands alone in strength. However, once Bitcoin stabilizes, a potential 2x on altcoins seems likely to come.”

Pseudonymous analyst DonAlt said that Bitcoin is now approaching its ultimate resistance level before reaching all-time highs. This threshold according to the analyst, is situated at the $60,360 level.

“The last resistance on the chart before new highs. Finally, I think we’re in an area where you could reasonably argue for caution. With current flows it’s hard to be bearish so can just be more or less bullish and I think $60k+ is the first area that is a bit risky.”

According to hedge fund manager Dan Tapiero, Bitcoin could experience a surge, potentially reaching between $90,000 and $200,000 by 2024. Tapiero said, “Bitcoin is up almost 100% in 5 months and there is still no sense of overheating. But suspects are still everywhere. Short-term interest rates in the US are still 5%! USD is strong. Due to this macroeconomic backdrop, I think a shocking acceleration in BTC is imminent.”

He added, “Breaking $70,000 in Bitcoin takes us directly towards $90,000. Then this year it’s $150,000 to $200,000.”

Cryptocurrency analyst Ali Martinez said there appears to be no resistance ahead for Bitcoin. “All we see is a major support wall between $54,300 and $56,200 where 903,540 addresses bought nearly 500,000 $BTC.”

Photo by CMP_NZ on Shutterstock

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