All three major stock indices closed at record highs on Thursday afternoon and now on Friday, bitcoin is following suit.
BTC Soars as Equities Peak
A curious thing happened on Thursday. Inflation came in slightly hotter than expected after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an elevated Consumer Price Index (CPI), but it turns out the big news wasn’t inflation, but rather, yesterday’s surge in jobless claims that economists say seals the deal for a rate cut by the Federal Reserve next week. That sentiment triggered a stock rally that saw all three major indices close at record highs and now bitcoin is joining the party.
The S&P 500 ended the day at 6,587.47, the Nasdaq broke 22,000 for the first time ever, and the Dow surged past 46,000, also notching its highest close. Software giant Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) led stocks with a 36% surge on Wednesday. The company has inked several multi-billion-dollar deals with multiple AI companies, according to Oracle CEO Safra Catz. The sudden appreciation in Oracle stock has turned the company’s co-founder and Chairman, Larry Ellison, into the world’s richest man with a net worth teetering on $400 billion, eclipsing Tesla billionaire Elon Musk.
But in the crypto world, bitcoin was the star, picking up where stocks had left and climbing above $116K in overnight trading before settling at around $115K on Friday morning.
“It’s still very much the bottom of the first inning, because we see bitcoin trading at $1 million dollars a bitcoin, if it disrupts gold,” Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said in a Friday interview. “We think there’s easily a 10x from here. It’s still really early. And I think we’ll be sitting here ten years from now looking back and saying, ‘Wow, today was really early.’”
Overview of Market Metrics
Bitcoin was trading at $ $115,026.52 at the time of writing, up by 0.38% in the last 24 hours according to data from Coinmarketcap. The cryptocurrency has moved between $114,030.39 and $116,317.21 since yesterday.
Twenty-four-hour trading volume was mostly flat, dipping slightly by 0.93% since Thursday to $46.65 billion. Market capitalization climbed 0.53% to $2.29 trillion and bitcoin dominance dropped 0.52% to 57.98% over 24 hours.
Total bitcoin futures open interest was flat for the day, inching up 0.07% to reach $85.10 billion, according to Coinglass data. However, bitcoin liquidations have jumped to $68.58 million since yesterday as short sellers got wiped out to the tune of $61.90 million in the wake of bitcoin’s overnight rally. Longs took a much smaller hit with a significantly lower $6.68 million in liquidations.