The price of Bitcoin jumped above $57,600 on Tuesday morning to reach its highest level since 12th May, while most other major cryptocurrencies were nursing losses. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Bitcoin, was up by around 1.2% in the last 24 hours with the hope that a Bitcoin ETF will be approved in the coming weeks continuing to play a supportive role. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to make a decision on a Bitcoin ETF as early as next week. However, the ETFs currently awaiting approval from the SEC are based on Bitcoin Futures and would not directly invest in Bitcoin.
The SEC chair Gary Gensler has previously signalled support for ETFs that would invest in futures contracts rather than Bitcoin itself, due to increased investor protections.
The approval of a Bitcoin ETF, whether based on futures or through Bitcoin itself, has been previously seen as a major milestone for getting Bitcoin accepted as a mainstream financial asset and will provide access for more people to invest in the cryptocurrency space.
Shiba Inu now 15th largest coin
While other major cryptocurrencies - including Ethereum, Cardano, and XRP - have softened in the last 24 hours, one coin that has continued to rally is Shiba Inu. The dog-based coin has now rocketed to 15th place on the cryptocurrency list by market cap with a market cap of $11.85 billion.
The cryptocurrency has exploded in October, rising almost 300% in the month so far. The rise was helped last week by a tweet from Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who posted a picture of his puppy, which happens to be a Shiba Inu breed.
Apart from the tweet, there does not seem to be much else supporting the ascent of the coin, which echoes the rise in Dogecoin seen at the start of the year. Dogecoin, which currently sits as the tenth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rallied to an all-time high of almost $0.74 in May, before momentum stalled and the price of the meme-coin dropped.
