During European morning hours on Friday, Bitcoin surged to $38,800 for the first time since May 2022, extending its robust multi-month upward trend supported by expectations of institutional demand.
The asset increased by almost 3% in the last day, tracking a rise in stock markets around the world. Premarket trading saw a 0.17% increase in the futures of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones, while the European index Stoxx 600 gained 0.52% since Friday’s opening.
The price spikes coincide with the excitement surrounding the proposed spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States building, and on-chain activity indicates that a sizable portion of the asset has been moved to cold storage, indicating demand and the absence of impending sell pressure.
The surge in total capitalization, which crossed the $1.5 trillion threshold on Thursday and has gained $400 billion since the beginning of October, was also aided by the strength of bitcoin.
Strong stories in gaming, layer 1 blockchains, and artificial intelligence have contributed to the rise of large-cap tokens; in the last two months, the prices of Avalanche’s AVAX and Solana’s SOL have more than doubled. As December goes on, some market observers predicted that bitcoin’s growth would be muted.
According to seasonality, December is regarded as a fairly neutral month of the year, having increased by half over the previous 12 years, according to a senior market analyst at FxPro named Alex Kuptsikevich. “There has been an average gain of 30.8% and an average decline of 12.8%.”