The price of Bitcoin climbed to around $30,400 on Tuesday morning, the first time since June last year that the world's most famous cryptocurrency has surpassed the $30,000 mark.
The increase means that Bitcoin's value has risen 82% since the start of this year, including 6.4% in just the past 24 hours. Its price had been fluctuating around $28,000 for the past three weeks.
Bitcoin's increase reflects broader gains for the cryptocurrency industry. Ether rose 3% over the past 24 hours to $1,900, meaning that the price of the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation has increased 60% since 1 January. Overall, the market value of all cryptocurrencies grew by 4% to $1.24 trillion on Tuesday.
Analysts attributed the increase to expectations of the US Federal Reserve easing off further rate hikes (thereby rendering traditional non-crypto assets less attractive), as well as general market turmoil in the traditional banking sector following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (America's 16th largest commercial bank) and Credit Suisse (Europe's 17th largest lender).
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"Amidst heightened geopolitical instability, faltering banking systems and mounting concerns surrounding reserve currencies, Bitcoin has emerged as the reliable refuge that many had anticipated," Bob Ras, the co-founder of Sologenic, a blockchain-powered network for tokenising securities, told CoinDesk.
The recent rise marks a significant turnaround in cryptocurrencies' fortunes after a dismal 2022, as increasing interest rates coupled with the collapse of the FTX digital exchange platform caused the crypto industry to tank.
Despite the recent gains, the prices of both Bitcoin and Ether remain at less than half their all-time highs of $69,000 and $4,800 respectively, reached in November 2021.
