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Crypto prices held on to recent gains Thursday as bitcoin and ether closed out a winning month.
Bitcoin rose 3% to $62,216.43 on the final day of February, according to Coin Metrics. On Wednesday, it surged to $64,000 at one point, before a wave of long liquidations triggered a pullback to about $60,000.
As bitcoin took a bit of a breather from its big run — it’s on pace for a 21% weekly gain — other cryptocurrencies caught up. Ether advanced 3.5% to $3,400.80. Tokens tied to Ethereum rivals Solana and Cardano jumped 16% and 9% respectively.
The two blue-chip coins shot higher in February after finishing January flat. Bitcoin ended up nearly 45% for the month, marking its sixth-straight month of gains — its best showing since December 2020. Ether advanced more than 47%, also for its sixth up month in a row and its best month since July 2022.
Bitcoin YTD
February was a triumph for bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which saw a record $677 million in daily net inflows on Wednesday alone for the third day in a row of inflows above $500 million. Initially, outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin ETF (GBTC), which had a head start on its rivals from when it operated as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, had weighed on the bitcoin price. Those outflows have now diminished.
Investors attribute February’s explosive gains to bitcoin’s supply and demand dynamics. Sylvia Jablonski, CEO and chief investment officer at Defiance ETFs, pointed specifically to the new ETFs and the upcoming bitcoin halving.
“We’ve seen over $2 billion coming into the various bitcoin ETFs so there’s been this need to access more supply of bitcoin to build these ETFs and that ends up driving prices up particularly in the near term,” she said.
“The second reason why you might be getting some extra momentum in the price over the last couple of days is the upcoming halving,” she added. “Historically, the halving has led to bitcoin prices increasing … past performance is not indicative of future performance, but I do think there’s this belief that the halving process will result in the same level of price appreciation.”
The halving is a mandate in the bitcoin code to cut the reward mining bitcoin in half to reduce the supply of bitcoin every few years and create a scarcity effect. The next one is expected this April.
February is a historically strong month for both bitcoin and ether. Bitcoin has now finished 10 of the last 12 Februarys in the green and has had an average return of 15.68% for the month, according to CoinGlass. Ether has now finished the month higher in seven of the last eight since its inception, giving it an average February gain of 17.21%.
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