Bitcoin (BTC) hit 17-month highs on Tuesday morning following one of the best Mondays on record as the markets digested a double whammy of positive information emerging from Grayscale and the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock (NYSE:BLK).
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) notched up another victory in its long-running dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with the DC Court of Appeals directing the regulator to revisit its earlier denial of Grayscale's bid to evolve its bitcoin closed-ended trust into an exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Such a pivotal listing would pave the way for bitcoin's trading on mainstream exchanges, potentially ushering in a wave of institutional capital into the cryptocurrency realm.
Furthermore, BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust has just clinched a spot on the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the key institution overseeing Nasdaq trade clearances.
The markets have acted very positively to this stream of news developments, with bitcoin rocketing past $35,000 for the first time since May 2022.
Though the BTC/USDT pair hit resistance at $35,280, the world’s largest cryptocurrency is still sitting pretty at around $33,800.
As expected, short-bitcoin futures contracts were devastated by Monday’s double-digit rally, with over $275 million worth of contracts wiped off the board within 24 hours.
Bitcoin is now more than 18% higher over the past six months – Source: tradingview.com
The second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) was also buoyed by the bullish news cycle, though to a lesser extent than bitcoin, with the ETH/USDT pair adding 6% on Monday and another 2% this morning.
At the time of writing, ether was swapping for a little over $1,800.
All of the blue-chip altcoins enjoyed a boost, with Solana (SOL) pulling ahead, followed by Polygon (MATIC) and Dogecoin (DOGE).
However, bitcoin remains the star of the show, with dominance (i.e. a measure of bitcoin’s market capitalisation against the wider cryptocurrency markets) surging up to a year-to-date high of 53.9%
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