Proactive Investors - Bitcoin bounced back from its dip under $40,000 as support re-emerged for the top crypto.
After the price of BTC/USD fell to an almost eight-week low, dropping below $39,000 yesterday, selling support picked up during the US trading session and continued into Wednesday.
Bitcoin advanced 3.4% to $40,160 over the past 24 hours.
The downtrend at the start of the week, which took the decline since peaking shortly after US financial regulators approved spot bitcoin ETFs to more than 20%, appeared to be "another case of the rumor being heavily bought and the fact sold", said market analyst Craig Erlam at Oanda.
"That's not particularly important in the longer term and we're used to this kind of volatility in the space. What matters now is what's coming next that could generate excitement around cryptos and deliver further gains."
He said the halving event taking place in March or April "could be that but it may take something more and skeptics could argue that's already been priced in at this stage", Erlam added.
The halving – the fourth in bitcoin's history – will come after the 740,000th block is mined and will see each block reward miners with 3.125 BTC compared to 6.25 BTC today.
Elsewhere in the top-10 crypto markets, the biggest gainers over the past 24 hours were solana (SOL) , up 9.3%, and Avalanche (AVAX), up 12.6%.
There were also reports that, following the Securities and Exchange Commission's approval of spot bitcoin ETFs, equivalents for ethereum should not be far away, with seven ETH spot ETF applications sitting on the SEC's desk.
VanEck is the first in line with a deadline of May 23, 2024 and BlackRock’s in August.