Bitcoin (BTC) has surged to its highest level of the year, hitting $28,503 on Monday morning, following a breakthrough of the $28,000 mark on Sunday, according to CoinGecko data. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency is slightly corrected to $28,375. This latest rally has resulted in a 4% increase in the day and a 28.4% increase in the last week, making Bitcoin one of the best performers in the market. The leading cryptocurrency had last traded at these levels in June 2020, during the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and the contagion that affected the crypto industry, leading to the downfall of various key players such as Celsius Network and Three Arrows Capital.
In contrast to Bitcoin’s impressive performance, major bank stocks have continued to plummet following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank earlier this month. The announcement that Swiss banking giant UBS had agreed to acquire its crisis-hit rival Credit Suisse in an emergency deal worth over $3 billion on Sunday added further pressure on the global banking sector. Several of the largest central banks, including the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank, came together on Sunday to announce “coordinated action” aimed at enhancing liquidity in their standing U.S. dollar swap arrangements, in a bid to ease access to U.S. dollar liquidity in times of crisis. Despite this, Credit Suisse’s stock plunged nearly 60% in morning trade Monday, while UBS was down 7%.
This debacle would not have been possible in the decentralized, transparent, auditable, and over-collateralized crypto asset ecosystem. Indeed, during the last week, crypt assets behaved like safe havens: along with gold, their prices appreciated.
— Cathie Wood (@CathieDWood) March 16, 2023
The recent surge in Bitcoin’s price has led enthusiasts to promote the cryptocurrency as a “safe haven” once again, in contrast to the banking chaos. Markus Thielen, head of research at Matrixport, has said that the firm is reassessing its price targets for Bitcoin. “We are adjusting our near-term price target as our previous target of 28,000 has been reached. The new Bitcoin price target is 36,000 by summer 2023,” Thielen wrote in the latest note. He added that the $45,000 target by the end of the year “looks quite plausible now.” Thielen also noted that while both Bitcoin and Ethereum are trading above the 50-day moving average, which is “bullish,” Ethereum underperforms Bitcoin with the ETH-to-BTC ratio going down.
