Bitcoin at $61K Level

CoinDesk 20 Index: 1,961 +3.2% Bitcoin (BTC): $61,384 +4.4% Ether (ETH): $2,754 +4.3% S&P 500: 5,434.43 +1.7% Gold: $2,513 +1.9% Nikkei 225: 36,442.43 +0.58%

Bitcoin (BTC) led the gains among major tokens by rising above $61,000 earlier in the day, reversing losses from a steep price crash earlier this month. Bitcoin gained over 3%, while ether (ETH), Solana’s SOL token, Cardano’s ADA, XRP and BNB Chain’s BNB gained as much as 2.8%, according to CoinGecko data. Leading memecoins dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) gained just 1%, suggesting that sentiment is not in favor of relatively riskier bets.

Goldman Sachs has positions totaling more than $400 million in seven of its 11 U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs. According to its quarterly 13-F filing, the firm invested $238.6 million in BlackRock’s IBIT, $79.5 million in Fidelity’s FBTC and then $56.1 million in Invesco Galaxy’s BTCO. Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets, said during CoinDesk’s Consensus event that BTC ETFs represent a “major psychological turning point” for the sector. Goldman Sachs’ digital asset desk focuses primarily on the digitization of assets.

Coinbase is developing a version of wBTC that will run on the layer-2 blockchain Base network. The speculation was sparked by cryptic posts from Coinbase, which included the phrases “cbBTC” and “Coming soon.” These posts were followed by a post from Base’s director Jesse Pollak, who described how the team plans to build a “massive bitcoin economy” on the network. Wrapping a crypto token is an important way to make it usable on protocols other than the one it was originally designed for, bringing more liquidity to the target ecosystem.

The chart shows bitcoin dominance over the past 12 months. The current level of over 57% is the highest since March 2021. This value indicates that positive developments such as ETF approval and halving outweigh the challenging market conditions. Source: TradingView