ETF approval drives Bitcoin towards all-time high at $65K – Crypto Weekly Roundup, October 18, 2021
October 19 2021 - 9:51AM
NEWSBTC
New eToro additions Polkadot and Solana lead altcoin rally with
double-digit gains Bitcoin has soared above $60K, getting
tantalizingly close to all-time highs on reports that the first
Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) has been approved by the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This bombshell
blasted Bitcoin 8% higher over the last week, boosted further by
Russian President Vladimir Putin who told CNBC on Wednesday that he
believes crypto has value. Meanwhile, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon took
the opportunity to assert his own view that “Bitcoin is worthless”,
two weeks after his bank released a note that said institutions are
replacing gold with Bitcoin. Elsewhere, recent eToro additions
Polkadot, Polygon, and Solana pushed ahead of the market with
double-digit gains all round. Shiba fell down in exhaustion with
11% weekly losses after a mega rally, and Dogecoin made a
half-hearted attempt to catch up with 4% gains. This Week’s
Highlights Bitcoin celebrates ETF approval Polkadot pushes towards
$50 on parachain milestone eToro adds Solana to investment platform
Bitcoin celebrates ETF approval In a monumental victory for crypto,
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is set to let the
first U.S. Bitcoin futures ETF launch on Monday after years of
rejected applications. Sources said to be familiar with the matter
told CNBC that the SEC isn’t likely to block the ETFs proposed by
ProShares and Invesco, triggering a rally that saw Bitcoin break
through $60K, for the first time since April of this year. Although
these ETFs have attracted criticism for being backed by futures
contracts and not the underlying asset, they could still have big
implications for Bitcoin — allowing tax-sheltered and retirement
accounts to easily get exposure, and potentially opening the
cryptoasset to a much broader audience. Polkadot pushes towards $50
on parachain milestone While all eyes were on Bitcoin, Polkadot
quietly surged more than 20% as the blockchain platform announced
it was ready to roll out the final piece of its roadmap. On
Wednesday, the team announced a date for the launch of parachains.
These are independent chains that can issue their own tokens and be
tailored to a specific use case, while still connecting back to the
main Polkadot chain. Slots for parachain development will be sold
via auctions starting on November 11th, and are expected to reduce
the circulating supply of Polkadot by requiring participants to
lock up the asset for the duration of the parachain lease. eToro
adds Solana to investment platform eToro has added Solana (SOL) to
its selection of cryptoassets. The SOL token powers a blockchain
platform that claims to be able to support 50,000 transactions per
second without sacrificing decentralization. Solana joins the
recent additions of Filecoin (FIL) and Polkadot (DOT), bringing the
total number of cryptoassets available on eToro to 32. Week ahead
The last time Bitcoin approached all-time highs at $20K, it was
beaten back fiercely for weeks before it finally broke though. This
time however, the amount of Bitcoin held on exchanges is
approaching all-time lows — suggesting traders have no intention of
selling and could be moving funds to wallets for long-term storage.
On the bearish side, Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead anticipates
that the ETF launch could be a classic “sell the news” moment, and
trigger a similar dump to that seen after the CME’s listing of
Bitcoin futures in December 2017. Image by Niek
Verlaan from Pixabay
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