First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Soars Past $30K

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Bitcoin broke the $30,000 level for the first time since June on Tuesday as March’s banking turbulence fades further into the distance and investors grow more optimistic about the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. Bitcoin was up 6% in the past 24 hours to $30,100. Trading volume, however, remains low, according to Matteo Bottacini, a trader at Crypto Finance AG. “This indicates that few are taking profits from the year-end low and new buyers are still hesitant to enter the market,” Bottacini wrote in a morning note. Crypto-related stocks also climbed on the back of bitcoin’s rise. Marathon Digital (MARA), Coinbase (COIN) and MicroStrategy (MSTR) all rose on Monday and were up further in premarket trading on Tuesday.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss recently lent their Gemini cryptocurrency exchange $100 million to support the business amid the market downturn, Bloomberg reported. The brothers provided the loan after trying to get outside investment for Gemini, Bloomberg said, citing anonymous sources. A Gemini spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The $100 million figure stands out in part because that equals the amount Gemini agreed to give some of its customers as part of the Genesis bankruptcy case. Genesis, which, like CoinDesk, is owned by Digital Currency Group, froze withdrawals in the aftermath of crypto exchange FTX’s collapse last year, a decision that locked up money for customers of Gemini’s Earn yield product.

Millions of Aptos Labs’ APT tokens will be unlocked on Wednesday in a planned move that’s set to increase the circulating supply by 0.5%, data shows. APT rose nearly 8% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The Aptos network has a market cap of over $2.3 billion, and the APT unlock is valued at over $50 million based on current prices. Unlocks refer to the automatic release of new tokens belonging to any blockchain network into the open market. They are often previously planned. Aptos is a blockchain that was founded by former employers of Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms (META), after Facebook abandoned its own plans to create a blockchain-based payments network called Diem (formerly Libra).