Bitcoin surges above $56,000 to hit record high since November 2021

“The main reason for this sharp rise is due to the trading volume of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded ETFs, which reached a new high of $2.4 billion on February 26, further increasing the confidence of US investors in this asset class,” Lucy Hu, senior analyst at Metalpha, noted for The Block.

According to The Block, Ether has risen 4.7% in price over the past 24 hours and was trading at $3,234 at 10:30 a.m. in Hong Kong. The GMCI 30 index, which measures the performance of the 30 largest cryptocurrencies, stood at 122.05, up 6% in 24 hours.

Justin d'Anetan, head of business development for the Asia-Pacific crypto market at Keyrock, said that while this is happening over longer time frames, "we are seeing steady growth in an asset with an established and hard-coded supply relative to inflationary fiat currency."

“Supply is limited and could be halved in a few months, but the demand driven by US spot ETFs appears to be limitless,” d'Anetin added.

Nine new spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, excluding Grayscale's convertible fund, set a record combined daily trading volume of $2.4 billion during Monday's trading sessions. Keyrock's D'Anetan raised the possibility that traditional investors are looking to make short-term profits from MicroStrategy's acquisition of an additional 3,000 BTC.

D'Anetan shared with The Block that he is seeing growing enthusiasm for the Bitcoin ecosystem while macro markets look "relatively underperforming."

“There is also a clear rush for ETH, which broke above $3,200 in Asia this morning amid the overall rise in BTC, as well as, I suspect, some expectations for the creation of its own spot ETF later this year,” D’Anetan noted .