Bitcoin Tops $47,000 Following U.S. ETF Approval

Bitcoin surged to $47,000 Thursday morning, in the wake of the landmark approval of the first U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs Wednesday.

At time of publication, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap is trading at just over $47,100, up 3.9% on the day, per data from CoinGecko.

The approval of the first spot Bitcoin ETFs by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was a landmark moment for the cryptocurrency space, enabling institutional investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin without having to hold the cryptocurrency themselves.

Bitcoin’s price fluctuated in the run-up to the approval, plunging after a fake tweet announcing the approval of all Bitcoin ETFs was sent by the “compromised” SEC Twitter account on Tuesday.

In the immediate aftermath of the actual announcement of the approval of multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs by the SEC on Wednesday, price action was initially choppy, before picking up steam Thursday morning.

SEC chair Gary Gensler was one of those who voted to approve the ETFs, despite posting a number of tweets highlighting the risks of crypto investing in the run-up to the approval. He conceded in a statement that “circumstances, however, have changed,” following a court order last year that forced the SEC to review Grayscale’s application for a spot Bitcoin ETF.

In a pointed rebuke, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said that the regulator had “squandered a decade of opportunities to do our job,” only reluctantly proceeding with the approval process after a “court called our bluff.”

Pre-market trading for BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) is up by 24.3%, trading at $27.26, with over $2 million worth of shares traded, per Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas.