Bitcoin surged to start the week, moving even closer to its all-time high. According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin was up 8% at $67.3K last time. It reached its highest level since November 2021, the last time it set a record, at one point, rising to $68.8K.  

Ether increased by over 5% to $3.7K. The market paused the major crypto assets’ rally over the weekend as it processed two days of sharp outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), which were offset by inflows into other “newborn” bitcoin exchange-traded funds. The major crypto assets are coming off their best week in nearly a year. Bitcoin gained roughly 21%, and ether gained 16%. 

Meme coins in particular were boosted by Bitcoin. Shiba Inu coin shot up 95% while Dogecoin increased 32%.  Analysts cite them as proof that regular investors, who have been out of the market for the majority of the recent cryptocurrency upswing, are beginning to enter the market again. Crypto data provider Kaiko claims that last week saw a spike in the weekly trade volume of meme tokens to its highest level since late 2021. 

Coinbase and Microstrategy, rode the bitcoin wave as they increased 11% and 24% respectively. The short-term impact of the impending halving in April, when mining companies’ revenue will be slashed, weighed on investors, however, and miners sat out the rally, giving up earlier gains. Iris Energy and Marathon Digital both saw declines of about 5%, CleanSpark and Cipher Mining both saw declines of more than 7%, and Riot Platforms saw a decline of nearly 7%. 

The short-term price movement of bitcoin indicated that it would continue to rise, but that it might cool over the next few weeks as unrealized profit margins get closer to extremely high levels. Approximately $42,700 is the current realized price of Bitcoin, according to CryptoQuant. 

Long-term investors, however, remain optimistic that the combination of rising demand for bitcoin brought about by the new U.S. exchange-traded funds and the anticipated reduction in supply following the April halving event will propel the price of bitcoin to yet another record high.