Back in January the US government said that exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, could start investing in bitcoin. Someone got so excited they hacked the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s website to break the news just a little bit earlier. Though a bunch of people — mainly the ever-woeful Grayscale trust — got out of their holdings after the rules of the market changed, a different bunch of people (or maybe even the same people seeking a better deal on fees) moved their money over to one of the nine other bitcoin ETFs that sprung up last month.
Inflows are flowing, with Bloomberg reporting that $8 billion of investment money is being pumped into offerings from firms like BlackRock and Fidelity. Now bitcoin is at $47,000, its highest point in two years. And some think it might be able to go higher.
Bitcoin bump and a ‘halving’
Another factor driving up bitcoin prices could be the soon-coming, so-called “halving,” an every-four-years event in which computers that mine the cryptocurrency will receive half the reward for the efforts in order to restrain supply. Though technically the endpoint is the same (a 21 million-bitcoin limit), this is the kind of narrative event that drives interest and speculation in a financial commodity with no moorings in the real world. It’s not going to reach $100,000, but the Motley Fool’s David Jagielski thinks it has a good shot at hitting $50,000.
“Based on a price of $43,000, Bitcoin would only need to rise a little more than 16% for its valuation to top $50,000, a level it hasn’t been at since 2021,” he writes. “If it rises by around 20%, then it could end up around $52,000 at the 150-day mark, which would be sometime in September.”