Bitcoin Defies Bad Tidings to Register Its Best Week Since 2021

There may be a lot of bad stuff going on in the world of crypto right now, but Bitcoin true believers don’t seem to care.

The largest cryptocurrency by market value, Bitcoin, has gained 12% this week, marking its best week since 2021. (AFP)

There may be a lot of bad stuff going on in the world of crypto right now, but Bitcoin true believers don't seem to care.

The largest digital currency by market value has gained roughly 12% so far this week, on pace for its best weekly performance since October 2021, Bloomberg data show. Other tokens have also gained, with an index of the 100 biggest coins adding more than 10%. Shares of some crypto-related companies are up even more, with Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital adding more than 60% this week.

It's a promising start to the new year for the token, which in 2022 lost more than 60% in its second-worst annual performance on record. And the rally has rekindled animal spirits, with fans enthusiastically posting on Twitter about the fear of missing out on further gains — even as the industry is still grappling with one of its darkest stretches yet amid the fallout of the FTX empire and others.

“In spite of continued bad news for the crypto industry, the recent renewal of interest in BTC continued to gather steam,” wrote Noelle Acheson, author of the “Crypto Is Macro Now” newsletter. “The market is facing seller exhaustion – buyers were having a hard time finding willing sellers, whereas earlier willing sellers had less trouble finding buyers.”

Acheson added that there are also signs interest from institutions has picked up — open interest of Bitcoin futures on the CME in native units has recovered to near end-of-year levels, she said.

The crypto market started 2023 at historically low levels of activity, open interest and volume following last year's drawdowns, according to Citi strategists led by Joseph Ayoub. Given the “systemic shocks” the space has suffered, interest has meaningfully decreased, they write in a report — though they add that higher prices can lead to more interest.

The bad-news flow hasn't stopped in the crypto world, with US regulators announcing on Thursday that they are suing Genesis Global Capital and Gemini Trust Co. for breaking securities rules. The Securities and Exchange Commission said the firms illegally raised billions of dollars from hundreds of thousands of investors through a high-yielding product that let customers loan out assets in exchange for interest payments.

Meanwhile, crypto companies are still tightening their belts, with some of the biggest firms collectively shedding thousands of jobs in the first weeks of the year, a Bloomberg analysis showed. Further upheavals could come as crypto brokerage Genesis and its parent firm Digital Currency Group seek to resolve their debt woes with Gemini and other creditors.

The 2022 slump scared away both retail and institutional investors, who watched as some of crypto's previously beloved companies, like FTX, imploded in embarrassing fashion. The money managers who avoided the many ups and downs of crypto may be feeling relieved for having done so, according to JPMorgan Asset Management.

“I'm interested in: is this on its way out in terms of becoming an accepted asset class that people are interested in?” said Brian Nick, chief investment strategist at Nuveen. “Or is it going to be on its way as something that gets more of a regulatory blessing and now requires more analytical rigor to figure out how to include it in portfolios?”