During the early hours of Wednesday morning, crypto prices experienced an overnight surge. Bitcoin‘s value rose by 3.7% over the past day, according to Binance data via TradingView, and was trading at $28,722 at the time of this post. Ether also saw a 2.2% increase in value during the same period. The increase in crypto prices coincided with banking issues at First Republic, a U.S. bank that saw $102 billion in deposit outflows during Q1 2023, $72 billion more than expected. The banking woes have also led to broader banking concerns, according to Swissquote.
Standard Chartered declared that the recent U.S. banking issues have been the catalyst for Bitcoin’s rally to above $30,000 and a return to the cryptocurrency’s core use case. They believe that the “crypto winter is over,” a sentiment that has been echoed by other experts, such as Markus Thielen from Matrixport, who predicts that the price of Bitcoin could reach $45,000 by year-end.
JPMorgan analysts have warned that Ether may face further selling pressure after Binance initiated Ethereum withdrawals this week, which could “put further pressure on ETH over the coming weeks.” Despite taking up to 15 days to be fulfilled, the withdrawals could still affect ether’s value. Additionally, liquid staking protocol Lido Finance plans to enable ether withdrawals in May.
Binance also announced its liquid staking token, set to launch on Thursday. The recent dip in the crypto market caused futures traders going long to suffer over $700 million in liquidations, and the recent surge resulted in shorts suffering a similar fate, with about $77 million in short positions across derivatives exchanges being liquidated in the past 24 hours, mostly across Binance, OKX, and Bybit.
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