The rally has erased some of bitcoin’s losses from 2022, when the coin’s price plunged in the face of increasing interest rates and the failure of crypto exchanges such as FTX – although it still trades more than 50 per cent lower than its all-time price of just below $69k, hit in November 2021

Bitcoin has staged on an impressive rally over the last three weeks to strengthen its position as one of the biggest success stories of the year in markets.

Its price has climbed 25 per cent to more than $30k from the lows hit on June 15 – the date that the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock filed an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to introduce an exchange-traded fund tracking the cryptocurrency.

The currency is now around 90 per cent higher YTD, meaning it is exceeding the benchmark S&P 500 share index, as well as surging Big Tech stocks such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet.

That rally has effaced some of bitcoin’s losses from last year, when the coin’s price plunged in the face of increasing interest rates and the failure of high-profile exchanges such as FTX – although it still trades over 50 per cent lower than its all-time price of just below $69k, hit in November 2021.

Nearly a third of its gains YTD have come since BlackRock filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, which triggered a rush of spot exchange-traded fund applications from rival asset managers such as Fidelity, Invesco, and WisdomTree.

Nasdaq has eventually refiled BlackRock’s application, saying that leading exchange Coinbase will provide market surveillance for the fund, after the regulator reportedly had preliminary concerns about some paperwork being unclear and incomplete.

BlackRock Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said Wednesday in an interview with Fox Business that he believes the asset manager’s exchange-traded fund will “democratize crypto” and make it cheaper for people to trade bitcoin.