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Bitcoin Hits 3.5-Month High Over $50K as Ether Tops $4K
Cryptocurrency markets are heating up.
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 (ETH), 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.
Bradley Keoun
Bradley Keoun is CoinDesk's managing editor of tech & protocols, where he oversees a team of reporters covering blockchain technology, and previously ran the global crypto markets team. A two-time Loeb Awards finalist, he previously was chief global finance and economic correspondent for TheStreet and before that worked as an editor and reporter for Bloomberg News in New York and Mexico City, reporting on Wall Street, emerging markets and the energy industry. He started out as a police-beat reporter for the Gainesville Sun in Florida and later worked as a general-assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, he double-majored in electrical engineering and classical studies as an undergraduate at Duke University and later obtained a master's in journalism from the University of Florida. He is currently based in Austin, Texas, and in his spare time plays guitar, sings in a choir and hikes in the Texas Hill Country. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.
Damanick Dantes
Damanick was a crypto market analyst at CoinDesk where he wrote the daily Market Wrap and provided technical analysis. He is a Chartered Market Technician designation holder and member of the CMT Association. Damanick is also a portfolio strategist and does not invest in digital assets.
