Bitcoin Rises Above $9,700 to Reach Highest Point in 3 Months

Bitcoin (BTC) has continued its journey north to reach its highest point in over three months after defying expectations of a temporary pullback in its price.

Over the course of eight hours, starting at 10:00 UTC on Feb. 5, the price of BTC rose 5.9 percent from $9,250 to around $9,775 before a small sell-off ensued that brought prices back to current levels at around $9,559.

Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, CEO of U.K. crypto firm BCB Group said the recent moves in BTC were likely due to shallow market depth amplifying buyer bids. 

“Any meaningful size still rocks the boat while the background bullish drivers are the usual suspects with the upcoming halving,” Landsberg-Sadie said.

Still, the impact to BTC’s latest price rise could also be attributed to activity in the altcoin market.

Su Zhu, co-founder at Three Arrows Capital, said the price movements were being led by large-cap altcoins, especially ether (ETH).

“There were some statements from the [Commodities Futures Trading Commission] that ether futures would be coming before the end of the year and some positive technological progress has been recently achieved on both the ethereum base layer as well as the progress to ETH2.0,” Zhu said

The seven-day short-term change in ETH’s price is up 18.5 percent alongside XRP, which is beginning to pull BTC higher; bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoin SV (BSV) are up 17.6 and 12.9 percent, respectively, over a 24-hour period, Messari data shows.