Bitcoin suddenly rockets past $34K as ETF excitement grows

Uptober may have finally arrived, with the price of Bitcoin (BTC) breaking through the $34,000 mark for the first time since May last year, marking a staggering 14% gain in the past 24 hours.

The price of Bitcoin suddenly spiked upwards on Oct. 23, with BTC gaining more than 10% from $31,000 to briefly touch $34,000 before settling down to a current price of $33,349 according to data from TradingView.

The price of Bitcoin over the past two weeks. Source: TradingView

The sudden uptick in price for Bitcoin comes amid a fresh wave of interest in upcoming spot ETF approvals and a significant increase in overall trading volumes across spot markets.

The surge also ca amid developments relating to BlackRock’s proposed spot Bitcoin ETF.

On Oct. 23, an X (formerly known as Twitter) post from Analyst Scott Johnson, pointed to two new pieces of information that could hint a spot Bitcoin ETF approval is getting closer for investment giant Blackrock.

Johnson pointed out that investment giant Blackrock had secured a specific “CUSIP” licence and may soon begin the process of “seeding” their spot ETF product with cash as early as this month.

In response to this post, Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas wrote that seeding an ETF is “typically not a lot of money” and would be just enough to get an ETF going, however admitted that it is overall a good sign and marks “another step in the process of launching.”

Note: Seeding is typically not a lot of money just enough to get ETF going. So I wouldn’t read this as ‘omg Blackrock is buying a ton of bitcoin’ at all but more the fact they doing it and disclosing it shows another step in the process of launching.

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) October 23, 2023

The sudden surge in price also came with a significant growth in Bitcoins spot trading volumes. At the time of publication, spot trading volume had surged to more than $35 billion over the past 24 hours, a gain of 241% in the same time period, according to data from Coinmarketcap.

While Bitcoin enjoyed the largest price impulse, the general tide of upwards price momentum lifted other boats as well, with Ethereum’s native currency Ether (ETH) growing 7%, while Solana (SOL) gained a whopping 11%. Additionally, Dogecoin (DOGE) was up 8% while Cardano (ADA) lagged slightly with a 5% gain.

Crypto market commentators and community members were left dumbfounded by the sudden move upwards — with independent journalist Autism Capital asking their 237,000 followers; “what the heck just happened?”

Wait, what the heck just happened? pic.twitter.com/JFX0pr9fFI

— Autism Capital (@AutismCapital) October 23, 2023

Zooming out from the immediate price action, there seemed to be a favorable set up for the sudden growth in the price of cryptocurrencies, with Coinshares data showing that digital asset investment products saw a fourth consecutive week of inflows.