Bitcoin Breaks Above $40K

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, regained the key psychological threshold of $40,000 even as the situation with respect to Ukraine continued to deteriorate.

"The move to isolate and cripple Russia's economy seems to be reacted positively by the market at the moment," said Lennard Neo, analyst at Stack Funds.

Bitcoin BTC$76,870.72 fell to as low as $37,000 over the weekend as Russian President Putin put his country's nuclear forces on alert, and the West amped up what it hopes will be crippling financial sanctions. The crypto, however, began moving higher earlier this morning, including a jump from $38,000 to $39,500 over the course of a few minutes just before U.S. stocks opened their session.

At press time, BTC was trading at around $41,105.

Laurent Kssis, a crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF) expert and director of CEC Capital, said technical and proprietary signals are strong to hold the $41,000 position for the cryptocurrency. Kssis added that "overnight we should see some appreciation even narrowly." He also noted that the average transaction value in dollars for bitcoin has rallied 10% in the last 2 hours, which "means investors are taking on larger bets in bitcoin which has helped confidence building."

Possibly helping sentiment this morning is unconfirmed chatter that Russia is exploring a digital "one world, one currency" for trade.