2024-2-16 14:15 |
Bitcoin hit $52,000 today – its highest price since December 2021, giving Bitcoin Bulls a big dose of Valentine’s Day Vindication. The surge takes the total market capitalization of Bitcoin over $1,000,000,000,000. Bitcoin is once again a trillion-dollar asset.
After 23 days of trading, the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has become one of the top five exchange-traded funds of 2024 by inflows, reports Bloomberg Intelligence. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETF now has $5bil in AUM. This puts it in the Top 7% of all ETFs by size in just 23 trading days.
The only funds that have topped IBIT’s $5 billion of year-to-date inflows are large well-established index ETFs from iShares and Vanguard that provide exposure to the S&P 500. The number one ETF ($13 billion in inflows YTD) is the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV). Number two ($11.1 billion in inflows YRD) is the Vanguard 500 Index Fund ETF (VOO).
In a post to his X-account last week, Ikigai Fund manager Travis Kling summarised why a new all-time high is possible in the near term, saying “BTC has essentially a free walk to ATHs. We just got spot BTC ETFs, which unlock safe access to BTC for trillions of dollars that haven’t previously had it. The halving is a few months away. The Fed is likely to cut rates multiple times this year. Stocks are at ATHs and look like they’re heading higher. BTC ATH is up ~55% from here. We can argue about the pace to ATHs (1H-24, 2H-24, 1H-25) and we can argue about how far beyond prior ATHs we’ll eventually go this cycle ($75k, $90k, $100k, $120k, $180k), but the path to ATH looks incredibly straightforward. It will likely just “happen” because we have ETFs and the Fed is easing. We’ve never had a setup like that before.”
In January, MicroStrategy acquired an additional 850 BTC for $37.2 million. The company now holds a total of 190,000 BTC at a total cost of $5.93 billion, or $31,224 per Bitcoin, as of February 5, 2024, according to the company’s latest financial report.
The next Bitcoin Halving will take place in April. The number of new Bitcoins created via the block reward is reduced by half every four years. This is known as the Bitcoin Halving. The next halving will be the Fourth Bitcoin Halving (H4). This is when the current block reward of 6.25 Bitcoins will be reduced by half to 3.125 Bitcoins. The halving will reduce the amount of Bitcoins produced each day from 900 to 450. This supply shock and media narrative is expected to provide strong tailwinds for Bitcoin later in 2024.
Bitcoin now appears more correlated with the share market than other ‘safe haven’ assets like gold, which has not followed the Bitcoin price surge and is currently at $2032 – almost unchanged on its December 1st price of $2075.
The price surge means Bitcoin is already hitting new all-time highs in many fiat currencies, including third-world and developing currencies, the Argentine Peso, the Turkish lira, and now the Japanese Yen. Bitcoin in JPY (BTC/JPY) is currently trading at 7.81 million yen ($51,867.50), surpassing its previous all-time high of 7.79 million yen set in November 2021.
Similar to Notcoin - Blum - Airdrops In 2024