ETF approval drives Bitcoin towards all-time high at $65K – Crypto Weekly Roundup, October 18, 2021

New eToro additions Polkadot and Solana lead altcoin rally with double-digit gains

Bitcoin has soared above $60K, getting tantalizingly close to all-time highs on reports that the first Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) has been approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

This bombshell blasted Bitcoin 8% higher over the last week, boosted further by Russian President Vladimir Putin who told CNBC on Wednesday that he believes crypto has value. Meanwhile, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon took the opportunity to assert his own view that “Bitcoin is worthless”, two weeks after his bank released a note that said institutions are replacing gold with Bitcoin.

Elsewhere, recent eToro additions Polkadot, Polygon, and Solana pushed ahead of the market with double-digit gains all round. Shiba fell down in exhaustion with 11% weekly losses after a mega rally, and Dogecoin made a half-hearted attempt to catch up with 4% gains.

Bitcoin celebrates ETF approval

Polkadot pushes towards $50 on parachain milestone

eToro adds Solana to investment platform

In a monumental victory for crypto, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is set to let the first U.S. Bitcoin futures ETF launch on Monday after years of rejected applications.

Sources said to be familiar with the matter told CNBC that the SEC isn’t likely to block the ETFs proposed by ProShares and Invesco, triggering a rally that saw Bitcoin break through $60K, for the first time since April of this year.

Although these ETFs have attracted criticism for being backed by futures contracts and not the underlying asset, they could still have big implications for Bitcoin — allowing tax-sheltered and retirement accounts to easily get exposure, and potentially opening the cryptoasset to a much broader audience.

While all eyes were on Bitcoin, Polkadot quietly surged more than 20% as the blockchain platform announced it was ready to roll out the final piece of its roadmap.

On Wednesday, the team announced a date for the launch of parachains. These are independent chains that can issue their own tokens and be tailored to a specific use case, while still connecting back to the main Polkadot chain.

Slots for parachain development will be sold via auctions starting on November 11th, and are expected to reduce the circulating supply of Polkadot by requiring participants to lock up the asset for the duration of the parachain lease.

eToro has added Solana (SOL) to its selection of cryptoassets. The SOL token powers a blockchain platform that claims to be able to support 50,000 transactions per second without sacrificing decentralization.

Solana joins the recent additions of Filecoin (FIL) and Polkadot (DOT), bringing the total number of cryptoassets available on eToro to 32.

The last time Bitcoin approached all-time highs at $20K, it was beaten back fiercely for weeks before it finally broke though.

This time however, the amount of Bitcoin held on exchanges is approaching all-time lows — suggesting traders have no intention of selling and could be moving funds to wallets for long-term storage.

On the bearish side, Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead anticipates that the ETF launch could be a classic “sell the news” moment, and trigger a similar dump to that seen after the CME’s listing of Bitcoin futures in December 2017.