Bitcoin stages stealth rally with third-straight weekly gain

While Bitcoin’s price has meandered the last few days, the largest cryptocurrency by market value has staged a modest under-the-radar recovery from its wintertime swoon.

Bitcoin is on pace to post its third consecutive weekly increase, climbing almost 19 per cent during the stretch, to trade around $43,500 as of 1:06 p.m. in New York. It dropped below $33,000 on Jan. 24, a decline of more than 50 per cent from its all-time high of almost $69,000 reached in early November.

The crypto market has been rattled as of late by growing expectations that central banks, led by the Federal Reserve, are poised to pull back on the pandemic-era stimulus that many observers credit for fueling the surge in risk assets over the past few years.

Sam Doctor, chief strategy officer and head of research at Bitooda Holdings Inc., said risk assets, including crypto, could enter a period of modest out-performance once the Fed begins to raise rates at their meeting in March.

“We’re still in a low-rate environment,” Doctor said. “History at least suggests that risk assets tend to do well early in a tightening cycle. The market is still digesting the tightening cycle that is just beginning.”

Bitcoin’s identity as a real inflationary asset is “increasingly asserting itself amongst investors, and consequently being increasingly sensitive to news on inflation and rates,” according to James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares.

“These price moves also highlight how investors perception of Bitcoin as an asset class is maturing, as in recent months we have increasingly seen price responses such as these following macro data releases,” Butterfill said.

Vetle Lunde, a research analyst at Arcane Research, said that individual equity-related news, such as earnings reports, briefly appeared to have less of an effect on crypto.

“We saw signs of Bitcoin decoupling from the equity markets following disappointing fourth-quarter results from Meta and other tech companies last week,” he said. “However, as soon as the spicy inflation numbers ticked in, markets reacted promptly.”

The assets classes continue to mimic each others movements, particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index. The correlation between the two stands at 0.42.

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