Premier cryptocurrency bitcoin (BTC) has rocketed above US$50,000 for the first in over two years.
The BTC/USD pair reached as high as US$50,400 in morning exchanges and though it has fallen back a bit, the pair remains bullish above US$50,100.
The last time bitcoin was seen at these prices was in December 2021, a the tail end of the record-setting crypto bull run when bitcoin touched US$69,000.
Since then, the crypto markets have been battered by large-scale bank runs, insolvencies, fraud trials and a general sense of pessimism.
Yet things saw a turning point in the middle of 2023 as the prospect of mainstream access to the bitcoin markets began to emerge in the firm of spot-bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
This January, the prospect became a reality when BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), Fidelity, Grayscale, WisdomTree and others were given the regulatory nod to list their ETFs on the regulated US stock market.
Though the spot markets were initially unphased by the development, positive pricing shock is starting to emerge.
The latest Bloomberg data shows net inflows of US$2.1 billion coming into the new bitcoin ETF market; this is despite US$6 billion-plus worth of outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).
The global cryptocurrency market is currently valued at US$1.88 trillion, with bitcoin’s share of the market close to 54%.