The Bitcoin rally continued on Tuesday (24 July 2018) as Bitcoin’s price went above the $8,000 level for the first time since mid-May. 

According to Bloomberg, “Bitcoin jumped as much as 4.1 percent to as high as $8,016.62 at 1:49 p.m. in Hong Kong.” As of press time (07:10 UTC), BTC has slightly retreated to $7,983.14, but it is stil up 3.86% in the past 24-hour period.

Bitcoin bulls seem to be excited by the prospects of the SEC approving an application from CBoe (filed back on 2 July 2018) for a Bitcoin ETF. Since the SEC typically takes 45 days to make a decision, a lot of people are expecting a decision by around 15 August 2018.

Yesterday, on CNBC's Fast Money, news correspondent Bob Pisani talked about this Bitcoin ETF application and the possibility of its approval. Pisani stated:

“Don't hold your breath on this. I don't think so. I have interviewed both the chairman of the SEC, Jay Clayton, and the man in charge of Bitcoin policy at the SEC, and both have made it clear to me that they are taking a 'go slow' approach on the whole Bitcoin ETF thing. Clayton is not going to take the risk of getting hauled in front of Congress on charges he allowed mom and pop to lose money on Bitcoin, at least not in 2018, even if the price of this particular ETC is very high. My guess is that the SEC will not deny the request, but they will extend the comment period. That's the ruling that will cause the least friction and [is] the most likely path here. They will cite their previous security concerns about breakins and thefts of wallets, along with allegations of manipulation they have stated before. By the way, there is also some custodian questions that have not exactly been settled here.”

Also, on the same segment, hedge fund manager Brian Kelly said that like Pisani he was skeptical that we would see a Bitcoin ETF in 2018, but he still expected the Bitcoin rally to continue for the time being due to two main reasons: (1) ETF speculation is not going to stop anytime soon; and (2) institutions are starting to get serious about Bitcoin. With regard to the latter, Kelly said:

“I can tell you from the calls I'm getting that people [who] looked at in December [and] didn't like the price are coming back now and saying 'Alright. This thing is not going away. We need to understand what it is, where does this asset class fit into our portfolio.'… And this weekend, you saw a report hat Coinbase has potentially secured a $20 billion hedge fund for their custody service.”

 

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