Bitcoin (BTC) surged to within a few dollars of a fresh all-time high price during U.S. trading hours Tuesday, rising to as much as $73,500 before pulling back a bit. The record high of $73,798 was touched on March 14 of this year.
At press time, the world’s largest crypto was trading at $73,000, up 4.6% over the past 24 hours, roughly in line with the performance of the broader CoinDesk 20 Index.
Bitcoin has been in a consolidation phase for multiple grueling months since its March 14 peak , dropping to as low as just under $50,000 at one point over the summer, but mainly sitting in roughly the $60,000-$65,000 range. The action tested investors’ patience and left many concerned that the bull market cycle begun in early 2023 had already topped out. Multiple attempts for new highs were met with heavy selling from bitcoin miners and long-term investors, while breakdowns were quickly arrested and bought up.
The recent gain has brought bitcoin’s year-to-date advance to just shy of 75%. The price has also more than doubled from its level of one year ago, when a rally began to get underway as it became understood that U.S. regulators had finally moved towards greenlighting spot-based ETFs. That approval ultimately came on Jan. 10 of this year.
Those ETFs became wild successes, with BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) alone having taken in nearly $24 billion as of last week.
Among other catalysts for the rally are new monetary easing cycles begun in 2024 from nearly every major Western central bank as well as sizable fiscal and monetary stimulus from China, and the rising presidential election victory chances for the crypto-friendly GOP nominee Donald Trump.