Over the past five days, Bitcoin (BTC), the leading cryptocurrency, has experienced a period of heightened volatility, triggering significant liquidations of leveraged positions as its price fluctuated wildly in hours.
After reaching an all-time high of $73,750 on Thursday, BTC experienced a sharp decline to $64,600 on Sunday. On Monday, at the start of the trading week, the cryptocurrency recaptured the $68,000 level. Nonetheless, it retraced over 2% shortly after, settling around the $66,800 mark.
Amidst this turbulent market activity, Binance Chief Executive Officer Richard Teng, as reported by Bloomberg, believes that Bitcoin’s record-breaking rally will persist, propelling its price beyond $80,000.
Binance CEO Bullish On Bitcoin
Teng attributes this expected surge to the increasing influx of institutional investment into the newly approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), trading for just over two months. The introduction of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States earlier this year has attracted significant attention from institutional investors, resulting in new inflows.
Speaking at an event in Bangkok on Sunday, Teng stated that he originally estimated Bitcoin to hover around $80,000 by the end of the year. However, he now envisions the cryptocurrency surpassing that milestone due to reduced supply and sustained demand.
Teng emphasized that his forecast represents his viewpoint and acknowledged that the rally will not be linear. He believes the market’s ups and downs will ultimately benefit the entire ecosystem.
Lastly, Teng highlighted the continued inflow of funds into US spot Bitcoin ETFs since their approval in January. He expects more institutions and family offices to increase their allocations to Bitcoin ETFs shortly.
Richard Teng assumed the CEO role after Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) stepped down in November following Binance’s $4.3 billion settlement with US authorities.
Digital Asset Inflows Skyrocket
In a recent blog post, digital asset investment company CoinShares announced that digital asset investment products experienced a record weekly inflow, reaching $2.9 billion last week.
This surpasses the all-time high of $2.7 billion set the previous week. Furthermore, these inflows bring the year-to-date (YTD) total to an impressive $13.2 billion, surpassing the total inflows for all of 2021, which were $10.6 billion.
Trading volumes for the week amounted to $43 billion, matching the previous week’s record and accounting for 47% of the overall global Bitcoin volumes.
During this period, global exchange-traded products (ETPs) crossed the milestone of $100 billion for the first time. However, due to the price correction towards the end of the week, the total settled at $97 billion.
Regionally, the United States witnessed substantial inflows of $2.95 billion, while minor inflows were observed in Australia, Brazil, and Hong Kong, amounting to $5 million, $24 million, and $15 million, respectively.
Conversely, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland experienced combined outflows of $78 million during the same week. On the other hand, the year has seen outflows of $685 million thus far.
Bitcoin dominated the inflows last week, securing $2.86 billion and accounting for 97% of all inflows year-to-date. Interestingly, short Bitcoin positions witnessed their largest inflows in a year, totaling $26 million, marking the fifth consecutive week of increased interest in this area.
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com