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Bitcoin prices could see a catalyst from a major crypto conference in Miami this week.
Dreamstime
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were rising on Tuesday as sentiment for risk-sensitive assets got a boost and investors looked ahead to a possible catalyst for
Bitcoin
in the next few days.
Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, rose more than 1% to above $ 46,500. Rally more than a week ago carried the biggest digital asset above the key $ 45,000 mark for the first time since January — a level Bitcoin has managed to defend, going up as Analysts are now looking forward to the start of an annual crypto conference that could see an announcement that further buoys prices.
“The Bitcoin 2022 conference will be held in Miami from Wednesday to Saturday this week, and the event could be a catalyst for the price to test and break its 200-day moving average ($ 48,300), which has been a short-term resistance, ”Say Yuya Hasegawa, an analyst at crypto exchange Bitbank.
“At last year’s event, the president of El Salvador announced that he would send the bill to the parliament to make bitcoin one of its legal tenders, so the anticipation for a huge, positive announcement is building up and likely coming,” Hasegawa said.
Bitcoin’s smaller peer,
ether,
also was higher Tuesday. The token underpinning the Ethereum blockchain network rose 1% to above $ 3,500, trading at the highest levels since early January.
Bitcoin and ether remain well off all-time highs of $ 68,990 and $ 4,865, respectively, reached early last November.
Smaller cryptos, or “altcoins,” were more mixed.
Solana
fell near 3%,
cardano
was almost 1% lower, and
luna
ticked up more than 2%.
“Memecoins” — called that because they were initially intended as internet jokes rather than significant blockchain projects — were in the green.
Dogecoin
jumped more than 5% and
shiba inu
notched a gain of less than 1%.
Bitcoin and its peers are, theoretically, supposed to trade independently of mainstream financial markets. However, they have shown themselves to be correlated with other risk-sensitive assets like stocks — and especially technology stocks.
A boost in cryptocurrencies followed similar moves in the tech stock space, where the sector outperformed the wider market on Monday. Tech stocks were led higher by
Twitter
(ticker: TWTR), which rallied 27% following news that
Tesla
(TSLA) CEO Elon Musk had taken a 9.2% stake in the social media group.
“Other tech company stocks followed Twitter and it certainly helped to raise the overall risk sentiment, which seemed to have spilled over to the crypto market,” said Hasegawa.
Write to Jack Denton at jack.denton@dowjones.com
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