Proactive Investors - Bitcoin (BTC) penned a stellar 7.8% rally against the US dollar on Monday, making for the strongest single-day performance for the world’s largest cryptocurrency in over two months.
It brought the BTC/USD pair above $70,000 for the first time since mid-April and despite inching back this morning, remains at $70,920.
But it was Ethereum (ETH) that turned the most heads, clocking in nearly 20% worth of gains to soar above $3,600.
Markets are bracing for a hotly anticipated decision from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the approval of spot-ether exchange-traded funds due this week.
Applications filed by VanEck and Ark Invest are due to be approved or rejected on Thursday and Friday respectively.
If the regulator gives these applications the nod, it could herald a groundswell of institutional interest in the second-largest cryptocurrency akin to bitcoin’s remarkable resurgence earlier this year.
Despite long-running consensus that the SEC will flat-out refuse these approvals, Bloomberg’s ETF analysts have significantly upped the odds of approvals from just 25% to 75%.
In an X post, Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas fed into rumours that “the SEC could be doing a 180 on this”, yet scepticism remains.
Update: @JSeyff and I are increasing our odds of spot Ether ETF approval to 75% (up from 25%), hearing chatter this afternoon that SEC could be doing a 180 on this (increasingly political issue), so now everyone scrambling (like us everyone else assumed they'd be denied). See… https://t.co/gcxgYHz3om— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) May 20, 2024
“Concerns over the liquidity of ETH's spot and futures markets, along with its previous classification as a security by the SEC, contribute to scepticism about swift approval,” said Matteo Greco, research analyst at Fineqia International.
The likely rejection would delay any further potential approvals until the fourth quarter of this year or early 2025.
In the meantime, the cryptocurrency markets remain buoyant, with bitcoin and ether up 15% and 26% week on week, respectively.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at $2.61 trillion, with bitcoin dominance at 53.6%.