Bitcoin (BTC) Price Shoots Past $28,000 As UBS Seals the Acquisition of Credit Suisse
On Sunday, March 19, the UBS Group officially announced the acquisition of troubled Swiss lender Credit Suisse in a $3.2 billion acquisition deal. The Swiss National Bank and other top regulators like FINMA brokered the deal between the two banks.
Soon after the news, Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader cryptocurrency market extended gains. As of press time, the world’s largest crypto Bitcoin is trading 4.53% up at a price of $28,342 and a market cap of $547 billion. With this, Bitcoin continues its winning streak by adding another $26 billion to investors’ wealth over the last 24 hours.
The recent Bitcoin rally has extended BTC’s weekly gains close to 30% while adding $120 billion to investors’ wealth. Interestingly, this rally in Bitcoin comes at a time of major unrest and wide cracks appearing in the global banking system.
By design, the pseudonymous Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto had envisioned BTC coming to the rescue of investors whenever the traditional banking system failed and Bitcoin is working exactly in the current circumstances.
Earlier this month, three major American banks failed in a single week leading to mayhem after which the Federal Reserve had to intervene and stop the contagion from spreading. However, the Fed had no options but to push another $300 billion as an aid to the banks from its emergency fund.
But the outcome was that this release of funds reversed all the quantitative tightening measures that the Fed undertook over the last six months. Well, many analysts are thinking whether the Fed has already given up on its fight against inflation and has once again decided to move to quantitative easing.
Even in this case, Bitcoin is emerging as a strong hedge against inflation showing the true characteristics of “digital gold” and emerging as a store of value. In fact, Bitcoin has managed to beat gold returns by a wide margin so far this year in 2023. While the Gold price is up by 9% since the beginning of 2023, BTC has gained more than 70% in the same period.
Interestingly, veteran investors Balaji Srinivasan believes that the as the Fed has decided to pivot from its monetary tightening measures, the result is nothing but a hyper inflation in the United States.
In what seems to be unrealistic, Balaji is betting $1 million of his own money saying that the BTC price can reach the $1 million in the next 90 days. In his multiple tweets over the weekend, Balaji has asked investors to move their money into Bitcoin and protect their savings against hyperinflation.
He wrote: "Bitcoin is not for making money. Bitcoin is for saving money. It is not an inflation hedge. It is a hyperinflation hedge. The world once ran on gold. It will soon run once again on digital gold”.