NounsDAO on the Brink of Treasury Division Split Amidst 'Rage Quit' Uprising by NFT Holders

MicroStrategy's Significant Bitcoin Impairment Losses May Mislead: Berenberg

CFTC Initiates Enforcement Sweep Targeting Opyn and Other DeFi Operations

Bitcoin (BTC) skyrocketed past the $28,000 mark on Tuesday afternoon, marking the most substantial short squeeze witnessed this month.

Based on data from CoinCryptoUs Indices, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization experienced a significant surge, reaching a high of $28,150 in just a few hours. Earlier in the day, it had been trading steadily around $26,800. Although there was a slight pullback, with its value dropping to around $27,900, it still maintained a 5.2% gain over the past 24 hours, outperforming most other digital assets in the market.

In the past 24 hours, traders who bet on prices dropping experienced a staggering loss of around $36.6 million in liquidations, as reported by CoinGlass data. This marks the largest sum of short liquidations since May 28.

The surge in prices follows several significant crypto initiatives announced by prominent financial services institutions, injecting a sense of optimism into an otherwise bleak atmosphere that had been overshadowed by mounting U.S. regulatory scrutiny. This scrutiny included legal actions taken against crypto exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.

Banking powerhouse Deutsche Bank announced on Tuesday that it had submitted an application for a digital asset custody license in Germany. Meanwhile, crypto exchange EDX Markets, backed by notable financial players such as Charles Schwab (SCHW), Citadel Securities, and Fidelity Digital Assets, commenced trading with Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) on the very same day. Adding to the recent buzz, investment management titan BlackRock (BLK) made waves last week with its unexpected filing for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

“The bitcoin rally certainly is correlated with the news of all these larger traditional financial institutions looking to get serious exposure to the digital asset ecosystem,” Brent Xu, CEO and co-founder of decentralized finance (DeFi) bond market platform Umee. “It’s clear that BlackRock, Fidelity and the others have client bases that want to invest in BTC and other crypto assets by way of ETFs and other more traditional investment vehicles.

“This news has served to somewhat blunt the relatively bleak regulatory environment that the United States finds itself in, and it also seems to suggest that these big players are wanting a regulatory environment that is both clearer and more fair than what exists right now,” Xu added.