‘On the Move’

“The crypto scene is on the move once again,” Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group, wrote in a note, adding that Trump Media’s play for Bakkt is “another piece of positive news that is lifting sentiment.”

Crypto is on the move again, a development that’s attracting attention and capital flows once more.

“The crypto scene is on the move once again,” Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group, wrote in a note, adding that Trump Media’s play for Bakkt is “another piece of positive news that is lifting sentiment.”

Indeed, Trump has vowed to create a supportive US regulatory framework for digital assets and set up a strategic Bitcoin stockpile. Yet the timeline for implementation of his promises and the feasibility of the Bitcoin reserve remain uncertain.

Such questions are feeding into debates about whether Bitcoin, and crypto broadly, can keep rallying. The highest concentration of open interest — or outstanding contracts — in the options market is for bullish bets on Bitcoin reaching $100,000, based on data from the Deribit exchange.

Some signals from chart patterns point to the possibility of Bitcoin gains in the next several weeks toward a target of about $98,100, Fairlead Strategies LLC technical analyst Katie Stockton said.

“The next upside target aligns with the 2021 peak and a 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of the 2021-2022 bear market decline,” Stockton wrote in a note.

Meanwhile, IG Australia Pty Market Analyst Tony Sycamore expressed a preference for buying Bitcoin corrections back toward $80,000.

“The options market is showing a clear preference for upside, with a large build-up of bullish open interest at higher strikes,” Tony wrote in a note.

“However, there is still a large amount of technical resistance to be overcome before we can say with any certainty that the bear market is over.”

ETF Options

BlackRock Inc.’s iShares Bitcoin Trust is the world’s largest portfolio investing in the token. Options on the fund may attract fresh investment to the crypto ecosystem by expanding trading possibilities.

The iShares product is one of 12 US spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, a group that as whole attracted net inflows of about $4 billion in the period following Election Day.

The current bout of optimism in crypto has dulled memories of a painful market rout in 2022 that exposed fraud and other risky practices and led to the collapse of platforms including Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange.

The checkered history was on display on Monday too, when the woman who dubbed herself the “Crocodile of Wall Street” and “Razzlekhan” in rap videos was ordered to serve 18 months behind bars for helping her hacker husband launder crypto he stole from the Bitfinex exchange. The stolen Bitcoin is now valued in the billions of dollars.

Trump used to be a crypto skeptic but changed tack after digital-asset firms spent heavily during election campaigning to promote their interests. The president-elect now has his own crypto projects.

The likelihood of a comprehensive US crypto bill passing in 2025 has risen to about 70%, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Government Analyst Nathan Dean wrote in a note.

A message from Advisor Perspectives and VettaFi: To learn more about this and other topics, check out some of our webcasts.

Bloomberg News provided this article. For more articles like this please visit bloomberg.com.