Bitcoin Tops $50K as Spot ETF Inflows Accelerate; ETH Rallies Amid Franklin Templeton's Filing

Bitcoin (BTC) topped $50,000 Monday for the first time in more than two years supported by last week's strong exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows and signs of institutional accumulation.

The largest crypto was hovering around $48,000 earlier during the day before experiencing a sudden rally to as high as $50,300 in the beginning of the U.S. trading session, its highest price since December 2021. The $50,000 level posed resistance as sellers stepped in on exchanges to take profits, stalling the uptrend.

At press time, BTC was changing hands slightly above $50,000, up nearly 4% over the past 24 hours. It outperformed the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index's (CD20) 3% advance. The index recently was hovering at 1,871, just below its intraday all-time high of 1,875 on January 11.

Ether (ETH), the second largest crypto, led gains among the CD20 index constituents, surpassing $2,600 and up 5.5% as asset manager Franklin Templeton joined the race for a spot-based ETH ETF Monday. Last week, institutional crypto exchange FalconX’s head of revenue Austin Reid noted "heavy rotation" into ETH among market participants in anticipation to spot ETH ETF decision due later this year.

Native tokens of Ethereum layer 2 networks Immutable X (IMX), Optimism (OP) and liquid staking platform Lido's token (LDO) benefitted from ETH's rise, rallying 12%, 9% and 7%, respectively.

Bitcoin's price action was supported by last week's strong inflows into spot bitcoin ETFs, attracting over $1.1 billion net fresh funds amid slowing outflows from incumbent funds such as Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and ProShares' futures-based ETF (BITO), asset management firm CoinShares reported Monday. However, potential selling pressure from Genesis, a crypto lender under bankruptcy protection, liquidating its $1.6 billion worth of GBTC holdings could weigh on ETF net inflows and prices in the next months, the report added.

Macro analyst Noelle Acheson said that bitcoin is currently benefiting from increased accumulation mainly driven by expectations of capital injection in China to stem its stock market rout and "inevitable" currency depreciation even in developed countries in the future.

"Given the lack of any clear catalyst to explain the BTC move over the past few days, what we are probably seeing is a pick-up in accumulation for the aforementioned reasons as well as the continued spread of Bitcoin awareness as the ETF marketing machines do their thing," Acheson said.

Given BTC's decisive breakout above $48,000, 10x Research's Markus Thielen said in a Monday report that bitcoin could run towards $52,000 in one go, a price target he previously set for mid-March.

"On Saturday, we received a fresh buy signal," Thielen wrote, adding that when similar price setups occurred since May 2020, BTC rallied by +8% on average in two weeks.

"This increases the probability that Bitcoin will go in one big rally to our 52,000 target, and the momentum continues to build upon the bullish side," Thielen wrote.