Bitcoin Reclaims $31,000 Level After Weeks of Languishing

(Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin advanced for a third day, rising back above the $31,000 mark, as risk appetite returned to US financial markets.

The largest cryptocurrency by market value gained about 5% to $31,438 as of 5 p.m. in New York. Ether increased around 2.8%, while a number of altcoins also finishing in the green -- Solana, Avalanche, Cardano were all up as much as 11% on Monday as market sentiment improved.

“Bitcoin's fundamentals and technicals have both been improving over the last few days. Though it may still be premature, some of the more optimistic traders are already calling for a floor on this extended drawdown,” Mati Greenspan, founder of Quantum Economics, told Bloomberg on Monday.

BNB, the native token of the Binance blockchain, dropped about 2%. Bloomberg reported that US regulators are investigating whether Binance Holdings Ltd. broke securities rules by selling digital tokens just as the crypto exchange was getting off the ground five years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.   

The crypto market could also get a boost from US consumer-price data later this week. If inflation is indeed coming down there's a good chance the Federal Reserve will ease up on market conditions, explains Greenspan. 

Bitcoin has been trading around the $30,000 level for weeks now, defying predictions of a potential further decline but also struggling to gain upward momentum as the broader US market has also taken a beating. Speculative assets like technology stocks and cryptocurrencies are expected to be hit the hardest by the Fed's plans to shrink its balance sheet, according to the latest MLIV Pulse survey.

“Bitcoin has stabilized over the past few weeks on improved short-term momentum,” Katie Stockton, co-founder of Fairlead Strategies, wrote in a note Friday. She said a short-term counter-trend buying signal was logged by Tom DeMark's popular TD Sequential model for technical analysts, “increasing the probability of a more pronounced oversold bounce. We assume the 50-day moving average will provide resistance.”

Stablecoins are continuing to face scrutiny from global regulators following the collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem in May, which has further undermined confidence in the space; algorithmic stablecoin UST is trading at $0.016, according to data from CoinGecko, sinking even lower after losing its peg to the dollar.

On Friday, Japan became one of the first major economies to introduce a legal framework around stablecoins, following UST's implosion. Stablecoins must be linked to the yen or another legal tender and guarantee holders the right to redeem them at face value, according to the new law.

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