Market Wrap: Bitcoin Hits Record $48.2K as CME Ether Futures at $33M Volume on First Day

Bitcoin and ether surpassed Monday’s worth information. In ether’s case, CME’s futures launch has given the asset extra credibility than ever earlier than.
- Bitcoin (BTC) buying and selling round $47,174 as of 21:15 UTC (4:15 p.m. ET). Gaining 7.1% over the earlier 24 hours.
- Bitcoin’s 24-hour vary: $43,948-$48,226 (CoinDesk 20)
- BTC properly above the 10-hour and the 50-hour shifting common on the hourly chart, a bullish sign for market technicians.
Bitcoin’s worth is in mega-bull mode once more Tuesday. For the second day in a row, the worth per 1 BTC hit a brand new all-time excessive, $48,226, in keeping with CoinDesk 20 knowledge.
“Bitcoin’s rush from $38,000 to a excessive of $48,000 marks a brand new all-time excessive, blasting by the earlier all-time excessive set a month in the past, and reignites the latest bull run,” famous Jason Lau, chief working officer for San Francisco-based cryptocurrency alternate OKCoin.

“Elon [Musk] and Tesla’s [bitcoin] buy of $1.5 billion and accepting bitcoin as cost is now the biggest affirmation of a pattern months within the making – companies are fearful about their money reserves dropping worth and are taking concrete actions to diversify into bitcoin,” added Lau.
“Tesla’s $1.5B enhance offers us an amazing instance of management that may finally push different S&P 500 corporations to allocate a part of their treasury reserve into bitcoin,” predicted Constantin Kogan, companion at crypto funding agency Wave Monetary.
Kogan made an especially optimistic forecast to CoinDesk. “If all S&P 500 corporations allocate at the least 1% of their treasury, the worth of bitcoin would improve by about $40,000.”

Curiously sufficient, with all this bullish bitcoin exercise, the ETH/BTC pair has gone bearish. It’s an indication merchants are promoting ether for bitcoin, with a very giant crimson promoting candle at 12:00 UTC Monday when BTC jumped on the Tesla information.

“Bitcoin having simply hit all-time highs once more, we’d have a little bit of a pullback for all tokens,” famous Andrew Tu, an government at quant buying and selling agency Environment friendly Frontier. ”On the whole although, the market appears bullish. It looks as if bitcoin dominance is because of make one other temporary run upwards once more because it’s exhausting to see alts (particularly DeFi) proceed to carry out like they’ve just lately with no break.”
On Tuesday, bitcoin’s dominance, its proportion of the bigger crypto market share, has jumped. At one level it was up 2% for February and as of press time it’s sitting at 0.94%.

Jean-Baptiste Pavageau, companion at ExoAlpha, advised CoinDesk to not dismiss ether (ETH), the native asset of decentralized finance (DeFi) community Ethereum, throughout this run as a result of additionally it is making good points Tuesday. “DeFi positively fuels up the usage of the Ethereum community and its management as one of many pillars of the way forward for finance.”
Ether futures quantity $33 million first day on CME
Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Tuesday, buying and selling round $1,769 and climbing 3.1% in 24 hours as of 21:15 UTC (4:15 p.m. ET). The digital asset hit a contemporary all-time excessive Tuesday of $1,824, in keeping with CoinDesk 20 knowledge.
“We anticipate some exhaustion on ether coming from the worth itself, above $2,200, but additionally from the charges to make use of the community itself whereas options are being constructed to sort out this challenge,” mentioned Jean-Baptiste Pavageau, companion at quantitative buying and selling agency ExoAlpha.
Monday was the primary day for ether futures contracts on the commodity bellwether Chicago Mercantile Trade. In whole, there have been 388 ether contracts traded by quantity on the day. Every contract is 50 ETH every. At CME’s closing reference fee Monday of $1,732, there was $33.6 million in quantity the primary day, with $19.7 million in open curiosity on the shut.
Traders will likely be maintaining a tally of this market. Exterior of CME, ether futures are already an almost-$6 billion market, with Binance main the best way with $1.Three billion in open curiosity Monday.
“This can be a massive milestone for Ethereum and ether from a number of completely different angles,” famous Stefan Coolican, chief monetary officer of Ether Capital, of the CME launch. “First, it offers readability on ether as a commodity like bitcoin; second, it offers establishments a widely known and accessible strategy to entry ether publicity; third, it offers one other software for worth discovery that helps buyers and regulators higher assess market dynamics.”
Different markets
Digital property on the CoinDesk 20 are principally inexperienced Tuesday. Notable winners as of 21:15 UTC (4:15 p.m. ET):
Learn Extra: BlockFi’s Bitcoin Belief Takes Goal at GBTC
- Oil was up 0.52%. Value per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $58.38.
- Gold was within the inexperienced 0.33% and at $1,836 as of press time.
- Silver is gaining, up 0.30% and altering arms at $27.22.
- The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield fell Monday to 1.155 and within the crimson 1.4%.