Bitcoin Price Crosses $60,000 As ETFs Attract Substantial Inflows

Crypto markets rallied on Friday morning after Thursday’s jobless claims numbers came in lower than expected, easing U.S. recession concerns.

Bitcoin (BTC) surged by 6% to $61,000, while Ethereum (ETH) jumped 8% to trade at $2,627. Polkadot (DOT) increased by 2%, and Solana (SOL) gained 1%.

Despite the bullish price action over the past three days, many analysts are urging caution.

Ryan Lee, Chief Analyst at Bitget Research, noted several factors that could be driving the rally. These include U.S. unemployment data, a new law in Russia legalizing cryptocurrency mining signed by President Vladimir Putin, and Morgan Stanley’s authorization for its 15,000 financial advisors to recommend Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to their clients starting August 7.

“This type of holding structure cannot support a full market reversal or recovery,” Lee warned in a market analysis.

According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, Bitcoin and Ethereum have “unsurprisingly” been the crowd’s primary focus.

“Bitcoin briefly crossed the $62,600 mark, a 25% rise in just over three days. Look for sudden increased excitement of potential $70,000-$75,000 BTC prices, or $3,000-$3,500 ETH prices as respective top signals,” Santiment wrote.

In the past 24 hours, approximately 60,000 leveraged traders were liquidated, with total liquidations amounting to $228.64 million, per CoinGlass data. This includes $78 million in BTC short positions and over $30 million in ETH liquidations. Short positions refer to bets that the price of an asset will go down, while long positions are bets on rising prices.

Bitcoin ETFs Pull In Nearly $200M

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded net inflows of $194 million on Thursday, up 330% from the $45.14 million of inflows on Wednesday, according to data from Farside Investors.

On Thursday, BlackRock’s IBIT recorded $157.6 million in inflows, bringing its total since launch to $20.3 billion. WisdomTree’s BTCW followed with $118.8 million in inflows — the highest since its debut.

Meanwhile, spot Ethereum ETFs recorded slight net outflows of $2.9 million on Thursday. Outflows from Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust (ETHE) slowed to $19.8 million.

Stock Markets Rally

U.S. stock markets are set to open in the green as investors look to regain lost ground from the selloff early in the week.

The Labor Department reported on Thursday that during the week of August 3, approximately 233,000 people filed for initial unemployment benefits. The figure is 17,000 fewer than the previous week and came in below the 240,000 forecast by Dow Jones analysts

Futures tied to the S&P 500 index climbed 0.5%, while Nasdaq futures gained 0.6%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures traded 0.2% higher.