• Bitcoin is up 10% while ethereum jumped around 13% at press time
  • Bitcoin had not traded below 30,000 since a volatile shakeout on June 22

Bitcoin returned to its month-long trading range on Wednesday after buying pressures pushed the digital coin back above $31,000.

The cryptocurrency tumbled below $30,000 on Monday night after news broke of further attempted regulatory clampdowns on the asset class at large, including BlockFi’s cease-and-desist order from New Jersey’s attorney general. 

“After the BlockFi news broke out, miners seemed to have moved a large number of bitcoins to exchanges overnight — around 32,000 Bitcoins, which put more selling pressure in the market,” BKCoin Capital founding principal, Kevin Kang, told Blockworks. “We haven’t seen a cascade of liquidations as we’ve seen earlier this year and muted reaction in both basis and funding rates shows that leverage has mostly been washed out since May 19.”

Bitcoin had not traded below $30,000 since its volatile shakeout on June 22.

Signals of further institutional adoption could have triggered crypto’s early morning rally. BNY Mellon has joined State Street and four other banks in offering custody support to a new crypto trading platform, Pure Digital. Following the Financial Times report, Bitcoin jumped 10%. Ethereum was up 13% as well.

Bullish sentiments could also have been brought on by a slew of successful crypto-related funding rounds, announced Tuesday. FTX closed a $900 million funding round, the largest raise in crypto exchange history. This brings the trading platform to a $18 billion valuation. And fintech firm Titan raised $58 million in a funding round led by VC giant Andreessen Horowitz. 

“It’ll be interesting to see if this support will keep its strength. If it tests the support again, we would probably not see such a bounce and face a sell-off to $23k,” Cryptohopper CEO Ruud Feltkamp said in a note. “While trading in the summer usually isn’t that interesting, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market.”

Bitcoin was trading at $32,841.19 at press time. 

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  • Morgan Chittum is a New York-based reporter covering markets, NFTs, the metaverse and digital assets. Before Blockworks she was a street reporter at New York Daily News, where she wrote about homicide, extremist groups, state politics and other critical topics in New York. She was a Media and Journalism Fellow at the Poynter Institute, where she dabbled in data and investigative journalism. She is published in American Banker, Yahoo News, Chicago Tribune and more.