Bitcoin on Track for Longest Hot Streak in Two Years

Bitcoin is on a path to increase for the fourth consecutive month, its longest streak in two years.

That’s according to a Sunday (April 30) Bloomberg News report, which notes that this sort of steak has historically been good for bitcoin, as its data shows that four-month advances by bitcoin presaged an average jump of 260% in the following year. In this case, that would bring bitcoin to a record $105,000.

“The biggest thing for crypto is that it’s a lightning rod for liquidity,” Christopher Forbes, head of CMC Invest Singapore, told Bloomberg Television. “And as liquidity returns to the market, and it is and we’re seeing that, I think crypto will continue to trade well.”

The report also notes that — over the past few days — Standard Chartered Bank, BCA Research and Bloomberg Intelligence have all pointed to potential paths for bitcoin to hit $100,000.

“The recent banking-sector crisis has helped to reestablish bitcoin’s core use case as a decentralized, trustless and scarce digital asset,” Geoff Kendrick, head of crypto and EM FX West research at Standard Chartered, wrote in a note.

The news comes amid a flurry of regulatory activity around the cryptocurrency space, such as the European Union’s approval April 20 of the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, giving — as PYMNTS wrote “the historically embattled digital asset sector … a legitimate on-ramp to one of the world’s largest and most mature market economies.”

As that report noted, market observers are increasingly taking the position that MiCA could help the crypto industry finally get something it has found elusive throughout its decade-plus history: access to banking services.

Meanwhile, the embrace of cryptocurrency does not extend to credit unions, according to recent research by PYMNTS and PSCU.

The April 2023 report “Credit Union Innovation: Bridging the Cryptocurrency Divide” finds that 56% of credit union leaders say they are less than enthusiastic about providing cryptocurrency products for their members.

Cryptocurrency remains a hot topic in the news, and while just under 1 in 3 U.S. consumers own cryptocurrency (31%), those who do tend to take crypto into consideration when making a host of financial decisions, including where they bank.

“This points to a potential disconnect between what some credit union members want, and what some credit union executives plan to deliver,” PYMNTS wrote.

Some observers say that the more consumers become educated about crypto’s possibilities, the more willing they may be to experiment with digital assets. And indeed, half of consumers say that one reason they don’t use cryptocurrency is because they know so little about it.

Still, credit union executives don’t appear to be convinced, with two-thirds saying they are wary of offering cryptocurrency because of its volatility, and half pointing to the relatively weak penetration of digital assets as a payment method.