Benchmark cryptocurrency bitcoin (BTC) shot up in this morning’s Asia trading hours amid renewed hope of an imminent regulatory approval for US-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund products.
Bloomberg analysts James Seyffart and Eric Balchunas said there was a window of at least eight days from today for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to “theoretically issue approval orders”.
“Even if approvals don’t arrive this month, we still believe there’s a 90% chance of approval by Jan 10,” they added.
It has been a long-running ambition for the likes of frGrayscale, BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), Cathie Wood, Bitwise, Fidelity and other major financial institutions to bring bitcoin ETFs onto the US stock market.
The promise has sent cryptocurrency investors into a frenzy, on the expectation of significantly higher institutional adoption of the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
Under chairman Gary Gensler, the SEC has been reluctant to give the nod, but a recent court victory for Grayscale appears to have tipped the scale for the bitcoin community.
New Research note from me today. We still believe 90% chance by Jan 10 for spot #Bitcoin ETF approvals. But if it comes earlier we are entering a window where a wave of approval orders for all the current applicants *COULD* occur pic.twitter.com/u6dBva1ytD— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) November 8, 2023
In response to the recent spate of optimism, bitcoin rallied to a fresh year-to-date high against the US dollar, with the BTC/USDT pair swapping for $36,574 at the time of writing.
Bitcoin last shot above 36k in May 2022 – Source: tradingview.com
The rally marks a sudden shift in bitcoin dominance, which was losing ground against surging altcoin prices.
After falling to the low 52% range earlier this week, bitcoin dominance has since ratcheted back above 53%.
Ethereum (ETH) posted solid gains this morning, with the ETH/USDT pair adding around 1.4%, bringing it to a four-month high of $1,915.
In the wider altcoin space, blue chips like Ripple (XRP), BNB, Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) were all in the green as morning trades ramped up.
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