Bitcoin (BTC) Rallies 4% as Crypto Market Cap Jumps $50B, Targeting $30K

For a while Monday, even as large parts of the world were off work celebrating Easter Monday, bitcoin (BTC) seemed headed for a promised land above $30,000.

Bitcoin price crossed the psychologically important level of $30,000 on Monday as cryptocurrency markets enjoyed a largely positive session, although the reason for the move was unclear and some analysts were pessimistic about its sustainability.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization rose to a high of $30,057 during the afternoon, its highest since early June, before easing back to about $29,616 at the time of writing, according to data from CoinDesk.

BTC had been teasing a run toward this threshold for about three weeks, having broken above $28,000 on March 14 following a largely upbeat U.S. inflation report. But the cause of Monday’s move was difficult to pinpoint, especially given that large parts of the world were off work celebrating Easter Monday.

“There isn't a clear catalyst for this spike, but we could be seeing some buying from crypto traders who were frustrated by a one-sided New York Times article that took issue with [bitcoin's] energy consumption,” Edward Moya, senior market analyst for foreign exchange market maker Oanda, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

“This move higher also occurred around the release of news that Federal Home Loan Bank debt issuance had lessened, signaling that the banking crisis was easing.”

Bitcoin rose nearly 4% from about 10 a.m to 11 a.m. ET (14:00-15:00 UTC). It had been lingering closer to $28,000 since mid-March, when fears about the conventional banking system began to diminish.

The second-largest cryptocurrency, ether, also jumped on Monday, crossing the $1,900 level before retreating. It was recently up about 1.7% versus 24 hours earlier.

Other major cryptos were largely in the green, albeit light shades. ARB, the token of layer 2 blockchain Arbitrum, was recently up more than 2.8%, while XRP rose about 1%. The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of the crypto market's overall performance, recently rose 2.3%.

Among crypto-related equities, shares of crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) rose about 7.5%, while corporate bitcoin vault MicroStrategy (MSTR) gained more than 8%.

U.S. stock indexes closed mixed on Monday with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average rising a few ticks of a percentage point, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite losing 0.03%.

Markets will be keeping an eye on the March Consumer Price March Index (CPI) report this week for signs that inflation is continuing its recent trudge downward.

In February, inflation in the U.S. slowed to 0.4% from 0.5% a month earlier and 6% on a yearly basis from 6.4% the previous month. Bitcoin jumped past $26,000 following that report, on March 14.

A continued slowdown could embolden central bankers to scale back their year-long regime of harsh interest rate hikes, although the impact on bitcoin is uncertain. The crypto seemed to gain momentum following the recent U.S. bank failures that caused worries about the conventional financial system, as investors shifted toward assets that retain value through good times and bad.

“BTC is also being seen as a reliable store of value that lacks the issues that come with storing your money by way of a third-party intermediary, or a bank,” Richard Mico, the U.S. CEO and chief legal officer of Banxa, a payment-and-compliance infrastructure provider to the crypto industry, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

“This is further supported by the decreasing correlation with the equity markets since 2021 – BTC is now properly starting to be perceived as a risk-off asset.”

Joe DiPasquale, the CEO of crypto fund manager BitBull Capital, was cautiously optimistic about the sustainability of bitcoin’s Monday surge.

“Bitcoin is likely to find resistance at $30,000,” DiPasquale noted in an email to CoinDesk. From a technical-analysis perspective, the current move is “a retest of the range high established in March after the initial surge from under $20,000. Success of this test would see the price claiming $30,000 while a failure here should see BTC drop to $25,000, followed by $23,000.”

But he added: “The current price is also testing the lows of July 2021, where the market bounced back into another big rally.”