Bitcoin value exceeds $45,000 mark as 2024 begins

Bitcoin value exceeds $45,000 mark and surged by more than seven percent on the first day of 2024 to hit $45,512, the highest level since April 2022. The trading volume increased by 111.60 percent, with a total value of $31.68 billion within 24 hours, and its market cap reached $890.56 billion.

This increasing value for BTC is due to two significant events approaching, such as spot ETF approval that might come on January 10, as reported by Reuters, and the Bitcoin halving in April.

Bitcoin ETF has been the talk among the crypto society, as seen in the competition and marketing campaign from asset management companies for spot ETF — BlackRock, VanEck, Valkyrie Investments, Bitwise Investment Advisers, Invesco Ltd., Fidelity, WisdomTree and 21Shares.

The positive impact of the Bitcoin rally has expanded to affect the traditional stock market, as the top cryptocurrency companies like Coinbase, MicroStrategy, Marathon Digital Holdings and Riot Blockchain highlight increasing prices in pre-market trading hours on January 1. Coinbase (COIN) increased by 6.34 percent to $184.95, while MicroStrategy (MSTR) rose by 9 percent. Marathon Digital Holding (MARA) and RIOT gained by more than 10 percent.

CleanSpark explores new strategies

As the cryptocurrency prices increase, a U.S.-leading Bitcoin mining company CleanSpark Inc., has planned to launch an in-house trading desk to expand returns from the cryptocurrency holdings this year.

“We really think that doing it ourselves is the best way especially with the large Bitcoin balance we have,”

Zachary Bradford, CleanSpark CEO.

The strategic move is expected as crypto miners hold more Bitcoin with the digital asset value surging due to the upcoming ETF approval. Most Bitcoin miners have already used options to earn income from their token stocks.

One of the Bitcoin miners, Marathon Digital Holding Inc., has sold the Bitcoin call option, allowing the contracts buyer to purchase the underlying asset at a certain price within a specified time, to generate income.

“I think what will happen is miners like ourselves will start having trading desks in-house,” said CleanSpark CEO Zachary Bradford. He also said the company can manage and observe its own risk profiles and expertise by implementing the strategy.

CleanSpark held 2,575 Bitcoins — approximately valued at $97 million — as of November 2023. This holding creates a significant part of the company’s assets, supporting its revenue of $168 million for the fiscal year ending in September 2023. Moreover, the company’s shares increased by 440 percent, gaining around $2 billion in market capitalization in 2023.

Ethereum’s rally, AI crypto market expansion

The Ethereum (ETH) price rose by 6.4 percent to $2,401, with a predicted price to reach $10,000 by year-end, indicating a strong rally. On-chain indicators suggest a bullish prospect with a potential increase to more than $2,700, while ETH will immediately surpass the current resistance level of $2,398.

Behind the ETH’s strong rally, the network is facing scaling challenges due to an expanding user base and application field, causing high gas fees and network congestion. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin introduced a new road map to boost the network’s efficiency and security, including the setting of single slot finality (SSF) after The Merge — the transition from energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) to eco-friendly proof-of-stake (PoS).

Besides Ethereum, the AI crypto market has gained $7.04 billion by 540 percent in less than a year, starting from $1.1 billion on January 9, 2023. Furthermore, $1.75 billion of this growth occurred in the last 34 days since November 29, 2023.

The AI-focused token Graph (GRT) has surged 40.73 percent with $2 billion gained, becoming a top performer among the other leading ten AI tokens. Fetch (FET), SingularityNET (AGIX) and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) also rose significantly by 34.29 percent, 5.85 percent and 4.45 percent, respectively.