Bitcoin hovers around $28,000, hits highest level in 9 months

Bitcoin, BTC, USD, hovering around $28,000 after hitting its highest level in nine months as investors looked to the Fed decision as the next key benchmark. Yahoo Finances, David Hollerith joins us now live in Living Color from Nashville, Tennessee. David, what are you tracking with Bitcoin right now and can we push through that $30,000 mark, do you think? Well, Brad, if you look at the futures market for Bitcoin, the strike price, the highest level of strike price is at the $30,000 mark. The highest amount of expirations is for the end of March. So there's definitely, I think you could say the majority of at least long positions are looking for that $30 mark. It has been interesting, just given that last week, Bitcoin saw one of its highest weekly gains on record. And so the cryptocurrencies price has been mostly consolidating leading up to the Federal Reserve's decision on Wednesday.

And just to give you an idea of where we came from, this rise we saw last week was effectively from $24,000 to this $28,000 mark. Now, for the last two days or so, Bitcoin has kind of been hovering around that. And the big question here is how much the banking crisis is playing into this and whether or not people are moving to Bitcoin as a safe haven asset. And that question is honestly very difficult to prove. And I would argue not provable yet. So we also obviously have the Fed potentially giving a 25 basis point hike or even less in this next decision. So that's also very good for risk assets or better than what could be.

And I wanted to point out too that since FTX has collapsed and also more recently, Silver Gate and signature bank have gone offline, liquidity or sometimes called market depth for Bitcoin has dropped across exchanges. Research firm Kyco has pointed this out yesterday. And this has been such a substantial drop that what it means is that price or orders for on Bitcoin, whether they're buy or sell orders can more easily influence the price movement of the asset. So that's definitely something to watch for, especially on weekends when trading is lower. So that might have a little bit to do with what's going on with these movements. I don't know if you've noticed them, but even when we say tight trading range, Bitcoin's been relatively more volatile than it was towards the end of last year. But that being said, Matrixport, another firm has put out that in this most recent rally, US investors appear to be the majority investor, regional investors who are buying Bitcoin.

So that's obviously something interesting to see. Again, not going to find an answer on Wednesday about no matter what the Fed does about whether or not investors are looking to it as a safe haven yet. No, but we'll be able to watch the price action at least. Thanks so much, Dave Hall, or I appreciate it.

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