Bitcoin Breaks Out, Near $58K, After Visa Adds Support for Stablecoin USDC

Bitcoin (BTC) is rising in the wake of payments giant Visa announcing support for USD coin (USDC), a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

• The biggest cryptocurrency by market value is trading higher on the day, near $58,000 at press time, with the daily chart showing a bullish breakout out from a two-week-long descending channel identified by trendlines connecting March 14 and March 20 highs and March 16 and March 25 highs.
• Prices have risen by nearly $2,000 since Reuters reported earlier Monday Visa's decision to allow the use of stablecoin USDC to settle transactions on its payment network.
• USDC is the second-biggest stablecoin, with a market capitalization of about $11 billion, as per data source CoinGecko.
• According to Reuters, by adding support for the stablecoin, Visa has stripped out the need to convert the cryptocurrencies into traditional money for settling transactions on its network.
• The latest Visa news comes five days after Tesla's CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the electric maker would accept bitcoin as payment for its cars. Bitcoin jumped from $54,700 to above $56,000 after Tesla's announcement only to surrender gains amid heightened uncertainty ahead of Friday's monthly options expiry.
• With the options expiry now out of the way, bitcoin's price gains seen at press time look sustainable in the near term – especially with blockchain data indicating the market sentiment is bullish.

• With the channel resistance flipped into support, the focus is now on the psychological level of $60,000.

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