Bitcoin rises above $ 56 and Ether follows suit

Bitcoin has briefly broken above the key resistance level of $ 56.000 as Ether is slowly catching up. Some attribute the incredible rise in the price of Bitcoin to the huge demand from buyers looking to protect themselves from inflation.

“Through insatiable buying pressure from issuers of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), closed-end funds and large public corporations adding bitcoin to their positions, demand far exceeds supply,” said John Willock. CEO of Blocktane.

Bitcoin makes people talk more and more about themselves

The first publicly traded bitcoin ETF in North America, managed by Canada-based Purpose Investments, saw $ 165 million in trading volume on its first day of trading, well above a typical Day One for a Canadian ETF.

However, there are still several psychological barriers for bitcoin to break, even as it has passed a key milestone of $ 1 trillion in market capitalization.

While 10-digit market capitalization potentially turns bitcoin from "a magic Internet money meme" into a widely recognized investment asset, it also poses some psychological challenges for some buyers, who may be selling some bitcoins for profit.

In the derivatives market, the price of bitcoin could be tested at around $ 56.000, according to Andrew Tu, executive of quantitative trading firm Efficient Frontier. “Based on open interest options, it looks like $ 56.000 is the next big resistance,” Tu said.

Some are taking it one step further. Michael Burry, investor of "The Big Short" and founder of Scion Asset Management, said in a (now deleted) tweet: "In an inflationary crisis, governments will move to crush competitors in the currency arena," adding "$ BTC #gold ”at the end of the tweet.

Ether close to $ 2000, DeFi leads Binance's BNB

Ether (quotation ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization, has grown to around $ 2. Ether's new all-time high could be seen as the result of bitcoin's surge, although factors such as institutional interest and the rapid growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) have raised its price.

But much of the chatter in the altcoin market centers on BNB, the native token of Binance, the world's # 1 cryptocurrency exchange by volume. BNB recorded seven times the return on a daily basis and its market cap surpassed that of the stablecoin tether (USDT) to take third place behind bitcoin and ether.

The BNB explosion is likely the result of the extraordinary growth of PancakeSwap, a DeFi project based on Binance's Binance Smart Chain. Trading volumes on the Ethereum-based Uniswap clone have grown by more than 1.000% since the start of the year and its CAKE token has increased by more than 2.000% to date.