Bitcoin jumped to $50k for the first time since December 2021 on Monday. The surge was led by Ethereum’s Ether (ETF), which, in these days, has been buoyed by anticipation for the next major network upgrade called “Dencun”. The Dencun upgrade, which is slated for March, will dramatically decrease Ethereum’s transaction cost and is expected to boost its adoption. Ethereum has also been grabbing the attention of the crypto NFT community lately, as Pandora announced a new token standard: ERC-404.
ERC-404 introduces what is called “fractionized NFT”, which will allow multiple wallets to own a fraction of one NFT. The spot bitcoin ETFs in the states have also surprised the market as BlackRock and Fidelity’s bitcoin ETFs are now the top two ETFs in the past 30 years in terms of AUM growth during the first month of their launch.
Furthermore, the total AUM of the nine bitcoin ETFs, excluding Grayscale’s GBTC, have exceeded the amount of bitcoins held by none other than Microstrategy, which has been buying bitcoin since 2020. Tuesday’s U.S. CPI could still be a negative surprise for the market due to the rise in oil prices in January, and it could put pressure on bitcoin, but if the annual CPI decreases from December’s 3.4% to 2.9% as the market anticipates, it will bring a relief for the market.
The next target for bitcoin will likely be $52k in the short term. The price may be ripe for some minor correction within a week or so, but its upward trend will likely continue due to improved demand through ETFs and technical sentiment.