Bitcoin Regains Ground as Price Edges Closer to $45,000

Bitcoin has continued to move upwards after weeks of struggle, nearing $45,000—a 1% 24-hour increase and 19% jump over the last 30 days. The last time Bitcoin was priced above $45,000 was February 10, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap has struggled to hold steady above $40,000 the past month, instead closely following the equities market. And it is continuing to do so.

The U.S. stock market is up today; so is crypto. The S&P 500 index is heading for a weekly gain of 1.4%, and the Nasdaq was looking at a bigger gain of around 2%. Bitcoin in the past week has shot up by roughly 6%.

Ethereum, the second biggest digital asset, is up today over 1%, trading for $3,136.82. It is up a fair whack in the past week too: over 11%. 

Bitcoin has long been referred to as “digital gold” by some commentators—a safe-haven asset that will be secure when every other investment struggles. But it is struggling to serve that purpose—other assets traditionally viewed as “safe havens” have performed better than Bitcoin recently. 

Elsewhere, a lot of the crypto market is still in the red if looking at 24-hour performance. Big players such as Cardano, the seventh biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, is down 5.2%. 

Terra, a popular network for DeFi products (those that enable peer-to-peer trading and borrowing), is also down 0.5%, at a price of $93.25. But both have made significant gains in the past week, up 31% and 6.8% respectively. 

The rest of the market tends to (but not always) follow Bitcoin when it does well. It has had a decent week in part thanks to a big Wall Street announcement: Goldman Sachs on Tuesday became the first major U.S. bank to make a crypto transaction. The New York-based investment bank executed an over-the-counter (OTC) transaction, by buying an OTC Bitcoin non-deliverable option (NDO) from Galaxy Digital.

This, according to some, has led to a surge in confidence from investors, who see big money and interest coming from established players as a good reason to get stuck in and put some cash in crypto.