The price of bitcoin (BTC) has surged nearly 6% in under 12 hours – climbing to over $6,700 – as cryptocurrency markets across the board have shown signs of recovery.
Source: CryptoCompare
Unclear What’s Behind Surge
The biggest BTC news for the last few weeks came last night as the US SEC announced it was once again postponing its decision on the highly-anticipated VanEck-SolidX Bitcoin ETF until December 29th.
This news however is likely unrelated to the recent surge. The last time the SEC made a similar postponement announcement on August 8th – bitcoin dropped over 7% in price – although it is possible that investors expecting an outright “no” were somewhat encouraged.
Changpeng Zhao: Stablecoins and $6k Support Level Are Positive Signs
While such price movements are most probably attributable to short-term trading activity, taking a broader view on the state of the market yesterday – Binance CEO Chanpeng Zhao offered some reflections on the year as a whole while talking to CryptoGlobe at Consensus Singapore.
We asked him about the proliferation of stablecoins – such as Gemini’s recently launched GUSD – a development Zhao believes is very positive:
Stablecoins are huge, I think people don't understand the impact of a regulated stablecoin… If people understood what the impacts are bitcoin price would be going up now because of all the stablecoins. They are a very good channel for fiat money to come in and spread around the crypto space. I think it’s a very, very positive thing
Moreover, Zhao was keen to look at the general support level for BTC this year:
If you look at the chart, we have seen a very strong support level at $6,000 in 2018, whereas in 2014 it was $200. I never trade myself, I buy and hold. Any minute the bull market will return, historically October to December are the good months… But I don't make predictions we just react to markets
Source: CryptoCompare
