Crypto traders braced for a total wipeout this week but Bitcoin had other plans

Bitcoin's price surged to a two-week high on Friday, defying expectations of a market wipeout. The cryptocurrency's resilience was notable, as it occurred despite a Federal Reserve rate hike earlier in the week and the failure of a bill that would have created a federal framework for the digital asset industry. According to Fundstrat's Sean Farrell, crypto has absorbed a fairly aggressive hawkish repricing without much damage.

The surge in bitcoin's price was attributed to technical factors, including derivatives traders being strongly bullish and short covering, as well as US spot ETF inflows. This helped push the price through the $80,000 level, according to Bitget Wallet research analyst Lacie Zhang. Other cryptocurrencies, such as ether, binance, and solana, have outperformed bitcoin over a broader window, with gains of 35%, 25%, and 41%, respectively, over the past month, based on Yahoo Finance's AlphaSpace data.

Market experts, such as those at CoinDesk, view bitcoin's price stability as evidence of its fundamental independence from Washington, with global liquidity and adoption cycles remaining the primary growth drivers.

Brief written by urgent.news from CoinDesk, Yahoo Finance — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.