Investing.com - Bitcoin attempted to mount a rally above the $8,000 level on Friday, amid rising expectations that bitcoin watchers are set to ramp up purchases of the popular currency ahead of a cut in overall supply.
Bitcoin rose 4.00% to $8,081, up from a low of $7,700. Over the last year, the popular crypto has made several attempts to breach the $8,000 level in a meaningful way but, until Friday, has come out short. Bitcoin had peaked at nearly $20,000 in December 2017, then slumped.
Its latest attempt to rally above the key level comes as traders expect bitcoin miners, responsible for maintaining the bitcoin network, to hoard popular crypto ahead of the next halvening, which will see the amount that bitcoin miners receive halve to 6.25 BTC from the current 12.5 BTC, reducing the total supply in the market.
For the uninitiated, bitcoin miners are users who help maintain the system by validating transactions stored in blocks on the network.
But there are some who warn that the halvening, which occurs every few years, is becoming less relevant.
By the very nature of halving the number of new tokens issued every few years, “on an absolute basis, each halvening is becoming increasingly less relevant," said Kyle Samani, co-founder of crypto hedge fund Multicoin Capital Management.
Still, the overarching message from the crypto community is one of optimism amid signs that participation from institutional investors is beginning to gather pace.
“You’re starting to get that long waited for institutional adoption. Fidelity is rolling out institutional custody. They’re getting customers," said Brian Kelly, crypto analyst and CEO of hedge fund BKCM in New York.
The optimism in bitcoin has triggered fresh fund flows into other cryptocurrencies, boosting the total crypto market cap rising to $252 billion from $235 billion a day earlier.
XRP/USD rose 3.86% to $0.38776, ETH/USD was up 3.63% to $252.35 and LTC/USD added 14.89% to $101.26.