Bitcoin, Ethereum Hover Near Yearly Highs as ETF Hopes Stay Alive

Bitcoin was fast closing in on $38,000 per coin—a price it hasn’t touched since April last year—on Monday.

At the time of writing, the biggest digital currency by market cap was priced at $37,710, according to CoinGecko.

It is currently up 2% in 24 hours and its price has climbed nearly 25% in 30 days.

Ethereum, the second-biggest digital asset, is up nearly 3% in the past day and is trading hands for $2,037 per coin. The asset broke above $2,000 for the first time since July last week.

There were only two times this year when ETH has been higher. The most recent was last week, when Wall Street titan BlackRock filed to list an Ethereum ETF on Nasdaq. In April, a few days after the network implemented its Shanghai/Shapella upgrade and—among other things—enabled the withdrawal of staked ETH.

The same keeps happening with Bitcoin: Any positive news surrounding the long-list of Bitcoin ETF applications the Securities and Exchange Commission has sitting on its desk leads to the price of the coin to go up.

An eight-day window to approve a Bitcoin ETF opened last week for the SEC but the regulator delayed giving a stamp of approval—or denial—to applications.

The rest of the crypto market was mixed on Monday. Major altcoins like Solana, Dogecoin, and Avalanche cooled their rallies and dipped in price.

But other smaller, albeit well-known coins and tokens, such as PancakeSwap and ApeCoin made impressive gains.

PancakeSwap (CAKE), the native token behind the decentralized exchange, was trading for $2.67 by the time this article was published—an 8% jump over the day.

While ApeCoin (APE) was also up nearly 8% in 24 hours, trading hands for $1.48. It’s welcome news for APE holders, who in the past couple months have seen the token hit new laws. At one point in September, it was trading for $1.16 per token.

This time last month, an Apecoin community accelerator launched from Animoca Brands’ Forj, an NFT creators platform.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.