Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) closed 2.1% lower for the week after a hattrick streak of logging week-on-week gains, but it is noteworthy that the benchmark crypto has closed above the $50k level every day since Valentine's Day. During the week, the world's oldest crypto rose as much as 1.5% to hit a high of $52945.05. It is expected to end the week at around $51,076.44, according to data from Yahoo Finance, compared to $52,160.20 last Friday. The digital currency breached the $50K level on February 13 for the first time since December 2021. It witnessed a slight dip later that day and even closed below the milestone. But since February 14, it has ended each day above that mark, indicating a bull run. Positive crypto sentiment has strengthened further off late as hoarders eagerly wait for the highly anticipated halving event, which is expected to occur in April. Halving is a process where Bitcoin mining is cut in half, reducing the number of new bitcoins released to the market. The last halving occurred on May 11, 2020, and the reward for mining a block of BTC fell from 12.5 to 6.25. Earlier on Wednesday, Tom Lee, a managing partner at Fundstrat Global Advisors, took a bold call and said Bitcoin could climb as high as $150K by the end of the year . “I think it's [Bitcoin], you know, could be as high as $150K,” Lee stated in an interview on CNBC. “You've got demand improving with the ETF and you have the supply shrinking ... and if monetary policy eases which we expect, you know, that's supportive of risk assets and Bitcoins holding up and I mean it's another reason why I don't think a drawdown is going to start that soon.” Seeking Alpha contributor Clem Chambers said in his February 14 report that the upcoming Bitcoin halving event has the potential to propel it to $120k. "Bitcoin looks to be making a classic break out as the halving on the 19th of April approaches, so it isn't genius to suggest that the market should adjust to this bullish time horizon and start to rally. The next stop if the break becomes vertical is $60,000, a simple hop for explosive Bitcoin. While this sort of price movement might seem wild, it is nothing for a volatile instrument like Bitcoin, and to put it into context, if a Nasdaq stock were to rise from $470 to $600 it wouldn't cause much of a stir. Likewise, if you scaled the performance of Meta over the last 18 months, a Bitcoin rise to $120,000 doesn't seem outlandish at all," Chambers wrote. Bitcoin price action: -0.8% at $51,129.08 at 14:24 ET on Friday; +113.4% in the last 12 months; and +15.6% so far in 2024. The total crypto market cap currently stands at $1.96T, down 0.8% over Thursday, according to CoinMarketCap. Notable news: Social media platform Reddit ( RDDT ) said in its initial public offering filing, that it invested some of its excess cash in bitcoin and ether . A notable decrease in cryptocurrency transactions linked to illicit activities took hold in 2023, Chainalysis said in a recent report , with $22.2B laundered through crypto, down 29.5% from $31.5B a year earlier.
