Bitcoin jumps past $20,000, helps cryptos scale $1 trillion-mark

Bitcoin jumped past the $20,000 level on Tuesday and cryptocurrencies as a whole climbed back above $1 trillion in market value, helped by a hiatus in the turmoil that gripped global markets this week.
 

The largest token added as much as 6.1% as of 12:30 p.m. in Tokyo, reaching the highest in more than a week. Ether, Solana and Avalanche also rose.

The gains came amid a bout of relative calm in global markets after bruising selloffs for stocks, bonds and commodities in the face of rapidly tightening monetary policy to fight inflation and concerns about a recession.

Over the past month digital tokens have proved more resilient than traditional assets, stirring speculation the worst may be over for crypto: the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 100 Index shed about 1% in that period versus losses of 6% for global bonds, over 10% for world stocks and 11% for commodities.

“Our short-term gauges support a rebound this week,” Katie Stockton, founder of Fairlead Strategies LLC, a research firm focused on technical analysis, wrote in a note Monday. “However, we only feel comfortable moving to a short-term neutral stance because we expect the bounce to fail quickly.”

Bitcoin at $20,000 is far off the record high of almost $69,000 hit in November last year. The overall market value of digital tokens is $2 trillion lower than 2021’s peak, according to CoinGecko data.

For James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, investor appetite for digital assets remains “tepid.” But he added that excitement about the upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain, the most commercially important network, has helped sentiment.