Bitcoin: Im back, BTCheads!

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Bitcoin is rallying harder than the boys in Sigma Alpha Epsilon before a noon kickoff.

The cryptocurrency briefly surged above $35,000 Tuesday for the first time since May 2022, and it’s now more than doubled for the year. Beaten-down crypto investors are foaming at the mouth at the possibility of a long-awaited bitcoin ETF hitting mainstream brokerages soon.

• A federal appeals court officially told the SEC that the logic it used to reject Grayscale Investments’s bid to set up its bitcoin ETF was flawed.

• The presumed ticker for a BlackRock spot bitcoin ETF briefly appeared on the website for a financial clearing house.

The ETFs could fuel demand for bitcoin by allowing investors to gain direct exposure to the cryptocurrency without having to own it.

Turning the corner on winter

What began as an industry downturn last year turned into a Category 5 storm of setbacks: Exchanges are facing regulatory lawsuits, the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin and the arrest of its founder last May sent tremors throughout the sector, and the industry is accused of enabling the financing of terrorism—all against the backdrop of SBF’s fraud trial over mishandling customer funds at his imploded crypto exchange, FTX.

Big picture: In an ironic twist, bitcoin’s recent rise is being attributed to the mainstream financial sector’s warming up to crypto, which it was originally designed to skirt.