Breaks $87,000 on Tuesday for first time since January

ETF inflows, policy hopes fuel rally

Price retreats to $83,000 range during Chuseok holiday

[Reuters]
[Reuters]

Bitcoin has paused after breaking through $87,000, with analysts now eyeing $96,700 as the next major target — provided the cryptocurrency holds above $84,000. A break below that threshold, however, could drag the price down to $77,000, market watchers warn.

As of 8:24 a.m. Friday, Bitcoin was trading at $84,366, down 0.09 percent from 24 hours earlier, according to CoinMarketCap. The token surged past $87,000 on Tuesday and held its gains for two days before retreating to the $83,000 range on Thursday as the Chuseok holiday began.

Investor sentiment remains broadly optimistic. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index stood at 73 on Friday, up 9 points from 64 a week earlier. On the index's 0-to-100 scale, a reading of 73 falls in the "greed" zone.

Market participants view the $84,000 level as a critical dividing line for the rally's next leg. Glassnode analyst Frederik Tysen wrote in a Wednesday (local time) report that the $84,000–$85,000 range is where long-term holders have concentrated the most buying activity, and identified $96,700 as the next major resistance level.

The $96,700 figure is derived by applying the long-term Market Value to Realized Value ratio — known as MVRV — to Bitcoin's realized price. The MVRV ratio divides Bitcoin's market capitalization by its realized capitalization, which reflects investors' average acquisition cost, and shows where the current price stands relative to that average.

Glassnode said Bitcoin has room to climb toward $96,700 as long as it stays above $84,000. Should it slip back below that level, $77,000 would emerge as the next key support.

Institutional money has been the primary driver of the recent rally. Lee Hwan-wook, an analyst at Yuanta Securities Korea, wrote in a Thursday report that "this rally is being underpinned by record-scale ETF inflows" and that it is "strongly characterized by spot-market and institutional investor leadership."

According to SoSoValue, US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of $998.95 million on Monday (local time), the largest single-day figure in roughly eight months. Inflows continued at $714.75 million on Tuesday and $346.98 million on Wednesday, bringing the three-day total to $2.06 billion.

A partial clearing of policy uncertainty also lifted sentiment. Although the US CLARITY Act — the Digital Asset Market Structure bill — failed a Senate cloture vote, rattling markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission quickly followed with an "Innovation Exemption" that temporarily permits trading of tokenized shares, rekindling hopes for broader regulatory clarity.

The Innovation Exemption suspends certain regulations for five years, allowing shares and exchange-traded products listed on US exchanges to be tokenized and traded on a blockchain. Qualifying platforms may operate without registering separately as an exchange or alternative trading system, and liquidity providers are exempt from broker-dealer registration requirements.

Kim Ji-won, an analyst at KB Securities, wrote in a Monday report that the measure is "analogous, in the Korean regulatory context, to a special exemption allowing temporary operation without an exchange license or investment-trading business authorization," adding that it "expands the institutional experimentation with stock tokenization and could influence regulation in major countries."

Kim added that a rise in on-chain trading of US equities could benefit related industries, including digital asset exchanges, stablecoin issuers and tokenization platforms.

Strategy, the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder, also resumed buying recently. The company purchased an additional 950 Bitcoin, bringing its total corporate holdings to 846,000 BTC.


kyoung@heraldcorp.com