©Reuters
Investing.com – Shares of cryptocurrency-related companies jumped in U.S. premarket trading on Wednesday after crossing the $59,000 mark, extending the rally in digital assets for a fifth straight day.
At 05:22 ET (10:22 GMT), the price of Bitcoin rose 4.6% to $59,202.50, placing the world’s most popular cryptocurrency within striking distance of the all-time high of more than $68,000 reached in 2021. by more than 16% in the last seven days.
Leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ:), as well as cryptocurrency miners Marathon Digital (NASDAQ:), Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:), CleanSpark (NASDAQ:), Cipher Mining (NASDAQ:), and Bit Digital (NASDAQ:), all rose before the opening bell in New York.
Bitcoin’s stellar performance this year has been spurred in part by the recent U.S. approval of exchange-traded funds that directly track the token’s price.
The approvals attracted a large amount of institutional capital into Bitcoin. However, retail trading volumes remained relatively subdued, indicating that confidence in the cryptocurrency sector has potentially been dented by a series of high-profile scandals and failures.
The announcement by MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:), Bitcoin’s largest corporate holder, that it recently purchased 3,000 tokens for around $155 million also supported the cryptocurrency.