Bitcoin breaks through the $ 48,000 level

On Thursday evening, January 11, the flagship crypto asset BTC $60,780.47 Bitcoin -1.42% Market capitalization $1.2 trillion VOL. 24 hours $1.44 billion jumped to $ 48,500 after the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were approved in the United States. However, bitcoin then made a small pullback.

At the time of publication, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is trading at $ 45,960, which is 40.35% lower than yesterday. The total number of coins circulating on the market is $ 900.8 billion. Traders made daily trading deals worth $ 43.2 billion. BTC’s market share is 51.1%.

The approval of the first spot bitcoin ETFs by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was a landmark moment for the cryptocurrency space, allowing institutional investors to gain access to the main virtual coin without having to own the cryptocurrency directly.

It is worth noting that the price of bitcoin fluctuated on the eve of the approval, falling sharply after a fake tweet about the approval of all bitcoin ETFs was sent from a «compromised» SEC account on the X platform on Tuesday.

Immediately after the actual announcement of the SEC’s approval of several spot bitcoin ETFs on Wednesday, price dynamics were initially unstable, but gained momentum on Thursday morning.

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler was one of those who voted to approve the ETFs, despite the fact that he had posted a number of tweets on the eve of the decision emphasizing the risks of crypto investing. In his statement, he acknowledged that «circumstances have, however, changed» after a court ruling last year forced the SEC to reconsider Grayscale’s application to create a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce said that the regulator «wasted decades of opportunities to do our job» by only reluctantly continuing the approval process after «the court called your bluff.»

According to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas, pre-market trading in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) was up 24.3% to trade at $ 27.26, with trading volume of more than $ 2 million.