Bitcoin Breaks Out, Near $58K, After Visa Adds Support for Stablecoin USDC
Bitcoin picks up a bid as payments giant Visa adds support for USDC – the second-biggest stablecoin.
Mar 29, 2021 at 10:40 a.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/WNC24K4M4RG75KBHRED653DFLA.png)
Bitcoin's price has surged over the past few days.
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- 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.
Bitcoin's daily chart
- 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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