Bitcoin and XRP Soar. Crypto Is Staging a Comeback. — Barrons.com
By Elsa OhlenBitcoin, XRP and the price of other cryptocurrencies are rising early Tuesday.The world's largest digital coin, Bitcoin, is up 6.4% over the last 24 hours to last trade at $96,339 according to CoinDesk data. The rise comes after cryptos across the board sold off Monday amid fears of a delayed monetary loosening cycle.Bitcoin briefly hit its lowest price since mid-November as it slipped below $90,000 Monday afternoon, before gradually paring those losses by Tuesday morning.XRP, the popular cryptocurrency used to facilitate and settle transactions on Ripple's payment platform, rose 7.9% to $2.58, following a similar pattern to Bitcoin price over the last 24 hours. It also followed the broader market, with the S&P 500 trading almost 1% down early in the day, to close 0.2% higher Monday.Among other cryptocurrencies, Ether is up 5.5% over the past 24 hours, while Solana is up 6.6% and Dogecoin is trading 9.9% higher.It isn't immediately clear what's driving cryptos higher Tuesday.The Crypto Market Sentiment Index rose to 63 over the past day (a number below 50 reflects a more fear-based sentiment whereas a figure above 50 is more based on greed), Alex Kuptsikevich said early Tuesday. "The index has been drifting downward since late November, but the drop late last week may well have been the bottom for the market," he added.For the past few months, crypto investors' optimism around the future for digital assets have soared as Donald Trump won a second term in the White House and promised to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the world.Yet, since mid-December, that optimism has been tested as the Federal Reserve hinted at fewer rate cuts in 2025, and a Friday jobs report showed the labor market looking strong and inflation still running above the central bank's 2% target.That hasn't stopped MicroStrategy, the software company that's the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, from increasing its holding of the digital coin. Between Jan. 6 and Jan. 12 it bought 2,530 Bitcoin for $243 million.MicroStrategy now owns about 450,000 tokens, equivalent to $43.35 billion with current prices.Write to Elsa Ohlen at [email protected] content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.