Bitcoin trades just shy of $55,000 for the first time since November 2022

Bitcoin  finally traded just a few dollars under $55,000 for the first time in nearly 15 months.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency changed at around $54,900 — a gain of nearly 6% in one day — just after 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time Monday before dropping to $54,600 the following hour, according to The Block's Price Page . That’s the highest it has been since late November 2022, when Sam Bankman-Fried was still a free man.

The move is interesting given the recent downtrend in bitcoin spot volumes. Rebecca Stevens, senior research analyst at The Block, noted that bitcoin’s spot volume’s 7-day moving average has been slipping since February 15, just as ether’s spot volumes began to rise.

Over in the futures market, short open interest of hedge funds on the CME are at all-time highs, somewhere around $3.83 billion, according to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. However, long open interest held by asset managers — namely, exchange-traded funds — are also at all-time highs at $3.58 billion.

“Both previously hit highs the week of spot bitcoin ETF approval and have seen movement in line with BTC price action, but is an indication that bitcoin bets from institutions haven't really scaled back after the launch,” said Stevens.

Technical take

Bitcoin has been on a tear at least since October 2023, according to technical analysts, when its 50-day moving average broke above its 200-day moving average. At the time, bitcoin was trading at $30,000. Thus, those using it as a signal would have been up over 80% since.

Meanwhile, some technical analysts see a pullback on the horizon.

“On-chain data and Bitcoin price charts indicate the possibility of Bitcoin price correction in the coming weeks,” wrote data company CryptoQuant in a blogpost Sunday. The firm’s analysts base their prediction on an indicator they call “short term Holder SOPR,” which is short for “spent output profit ratio,” a ratio that divides the current value of sold bitcoin by their value when they were acquired. “It looks like Bitcoin may drop to the $48,000 area,” CryptoQuant concluded.

As of 4:46 p.m. ET, bitcoin was trading at $54,622, up 5.6%, while the GMCI index was at 120.16, up 3.8% in 24 hours, according to The Block's Price Page .