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Bitcoin Hits 3.5-Month High Over $50K as Ether Tops $4K
Cryptocurrency markets are heating up.
Updated May 11, 2023, 6:45 p.m. Published Sep 3, 2021, 1:46 p.m.
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Cryptocurrency markets were buoyed by a fresh wave of bullishness Friday, as bitcoin rose for a fourth straight day to a three and a half-month high of over $50,000 and ether , the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, pushed past a key psychological level of $4,000.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, appeared to get fresh impetus from a report Friday showing lackluster U.S. jobs growth during August. The report fueled speculation that soft economic data might prompt the Federal Reserve to maintain its program of buying $120 billion a month in bonds longer than previously expected.
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Some investors speculate that the U.S. central bank’s accommodative monetary policies will suppress returns on traditional market assets like bonds, strengthening the appeal of bitcoin and other fast-rising cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin climbed to as high as $50,940 on Friday and was changing hands at around $50,700 at press time. That’s the highest price since May, though it is still well off the all-time high of near $65,000 that was reached in April.
Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 4.9% on Friday, pushing past $4,000 for the first time since May. The price climbed as high as $4,025 before slipping back to $3,960 as of press time.
The resurgence in non-fungible token (NFT) activity and interest in yield-generating decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens have also contributed to ETH’s price rally.
Ether has vastly outperformed bitcoin this year, rising fivefold in price and pushing its market capitalization to about $465 billion. That’s close to half of bitcoin’s market cap of $950 billion.
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