Bitcoin briefly passes $50K for first time in over 2 years

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) prices briefly jumped above $50,000 on Monday, a benchmark value the cryptocurrency hasn't sat at since late 2021. Yahoo Finance Live monitors bitcoin's intraday price action and comments on the enthusiasm re-injected into the crypto space since the trading of spot bitcoin ETF offerings in January.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video transcript

- Crypto today, why don't we start there. Because we have some headlines, Julie Hyman. Bitcoin jumping to $50,000 for the first time in more than two years. We all remember, of course, 2022 and that nasty plunge. Lots of questions at that point, Julie, about the asset, the future of the asset. You had crypto fans on TV seeming dazed and confused.

But now Bitcoin has been on the move. It has tripled since the start of last year. Of course, listen, it's still well below that all time high which was around $69,000. But rallying back here in part, of course, due to something we've talked a lot about, which is these approval of these new spot Bitcoin ETFs and the bet some are making that yes, these new products over time are going to drive greater mainstream adoption.

JULIE HYMAN: And initially, of course, after we finally got the approval and the beginning of trading for those ETFs, we saw a little bit of a pullback in Bitcoin, which some who watch the industry closely had predicted would happen to sell the news event. Now, CoinDesk the publication that follows crypto very closely, says we're back at the FOMO stage of Bitcoin here, pointing out, as you did, that we saw that peak of $69,000 but then the low at the end of 2022 was 16.

So obviously we've come back quite a bit from that level and last year was a slow rally, if you will. There's one analyst out there that again, CoinDesk is quoting today from Crypto Quant, that we could see Bitcoin touch $112,000 this year, and they're looking specifically at the inflows into those spot Bitcoin funds, and if that momentum continues that's at least the implication of that one forecast.

- Yeah. And also not to get too geeky, but people are also talking about that so-called Bitcoin halving, which you expect in April, which refers to this process of curbing the supply of new tokens. So some expectation as we get closer to that is that another catalyst as chatter start bringing that up as well.

JULIE HYMAN: Right. When we look at the spot Bitcoin ETFs in terms of the net inflows into those according to Bloomberg Intelligence data, $2.8 billion is what we're talking about. And that's even with some pretty big outflows of more than $6 billion from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. That's because, again, not to get too wonky here--

- Do it. Get wonky.

JULIE HYMAN: But basically, before these were approved, many people held that GBTC, then when the others got approved they moved their money over because we saw the discount collapse between GBTC and the underlying price of Bitcoin. So we saw some funds move their money to some of the other spot Bitcoin ETFs. All of that said, again, still net inflows into those spot Bitcoin ETFs.

- Yeah. And it was interesting because the reports I saw too said that maybe you were seeing some indication that the outflows from the grayscale, grayscale fund could be maybe losing some steam here as well, so that was part of it too.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. So we'll see what happens next. And we're going to talk about Bitcoin a little bit more, a little bit later in the show.