Experts bullish on bitcoin after rally takes it past $50k
NEW DELHI: Bitcoin surged past the psychologically important $50,000 mark for the first time in more than three months as a fresh round of adoption and interest by institutional and retail investors turned its outlook bullish.
Bitcoin last traded above the $50,000 zone on May 15.
According to the ‘fear and greed index’ indicator provided by alternative.me, the bitcoin sentiment was at “extreme greed”, sitting at 79, the highest level since April 18.
After moving in a wide range of $48,291.22 to $50,266.43, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency was trading 2.3% higher at $50,164 at around 2.55pm IST, as per CoinGecko, a digital currency price and data platform.
Bitcoin is still more than 20% lower than its all-time high of $64,804.72, which it hit on April 14.
“Bitcoin has outperformed market expectations once again owing to the recent positive announcements made by Coinbase and Paypal in support of crypto,” said Jay Hao, CEO, OKEx.com, the world’s No. 2 crypto exchange in terms of trading volume.
US crypto exchange Coinbase last week received its board’s approval to buy over $500 million of crypto. Moreover, 10% of the firm’s quarterly net income from now on will go into crypto assets.
PayPal Holdings Inc. on Monday announced that it is allowing customers in the UK to buy and sell bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
“It seems like a lot of institutional
and retail players executed large, strategic investments during the bitcoin price dip in July,” Hao added. Bitcoin was trading below the $30,000 mark in July.
According to experts, bitcoin technicals were also looking better than before, as price structure on the higher time frame turned bullish after five weeks.
“The current price action is a result of multi-week price consolidation that happened in the $30,000-40,000 price range. Bitcoin data indicates that institutional investors and big accounts bought bitcoin dips, and retail investors flipped bullish after bitcoin established support above $42,000,” said Hitesh Malviya, founder, itsblockchain.com, a blockchain and cryptocurrency publication platform. Malviya believes that bitcoin can accelerate towards $100,000 once the price breaks above its lifetime high.