Bitcoin Breaks Out, Near $58K, After Visa Adds Support for Stablecoin USDC

Bitcoin (BTC) is rising in the wake of payments giant Visa announcing support for USD coin (USDC), a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The biggest cryptocurrency by market value is trading higher on the day, near $58,000 at press time, with the daily chart showing a bullish breakout out from a two-week-long descending channel identified by trendlines connecting March 14 and March 20 highs and March 16 and March 25 highs.
Prices have risen by nearly $2,000 since Reuters reported earlier Monday Visa's decision to allow the use of stablecoin USDC to settle transactions on its payment network.
USDC is the second-biggest stablecoin, with a market capitalization of about $11 billion, as per data source CoinGecko.
According to Reuters, by adding support for the stablecoin, Visa has stripped out the need to convert the cryptocurrencies into traditional money for settling transactions on its network.
The latest Visa news comes five days after Tesla's CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the electric maker would accept bitcoin as payment for its cars. Bitcoin jumped from $54,700 to above $56,000 after Tesla's announcement only to surrender gains amid heightened uncertainty ahead of Friday's monthly options expiry.
With the options expiry now out of the way, bitcoin's price gains seen at press time look sustainable in the near term – especially with blockchain data indicating the market sentiment is bullish.

With the channel resistance flipped into support, the focus is now on the psychological level of $60,000.

Also read: Elon Musk’s Bitcoin Marketing Coup

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Omkar Godbole

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