Bitcoin To See 'Minimal Resistance' On Way To $20K As It Shoots Past $16K, Analysts Say

Bitcoin shot past the crucial psychological mark of $16,000 early Thursday, breaking a key resistance level. The apex cryptocurrency held on to the gains at press time early Friday, up 4.3% in the 24-hour trailing period. 

What Happened: The upward movement of the apex cryptocurrency was caused by institutional adoption, which was construed as a positive, according to CoinDesk.

Jason Lau, the chief operating officer for OKCoin told CoinDesk, “Bitcoin cleared $16,000 for the first time in three years, confirming the existing bullish uptrend.”

Lau said there was now “minimal resistance” until $20,000 levels. “It’s hard to tell how the next few weeks will trade into year-end, but signs are positive,” the executive theorized. 

“Aggregate bitcoin futures open interest continues to rise and, more importantly, it is not just the unregulated venues that are seeing this growth but also [open interest] on the [Chicago Mercantile Exchange] is within touching distance of the $1 billion mark,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Bequant, a cryptocurrency brokerage told CoinDesk.

Altcoins presented a mixed picture at press-time. Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) ,and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) were all higher by 0.63%, 4.90% and 1.81% at $461.38, $ 61.73, and $258.25 respectively.

XRP, Chainlink (LINK) and Monero (XMR) declined 0.15%, 0.78%, and 2.02% to $0.26, $12.68 and $112.54 respectively.

Why It Matters: Brian Kelly, CEO and founder of BK Asset Management said on CNBC’s “Fast Money” program Thursday that to have “high profile investors come out and say they own [Bitcoin] takes out a lot of career risk away from investors.”

Kelly said some of the buyers coming in now are institutional investors. The analyst said that central bank digital currencies are not competition for the cryptocurrency because “Bitcoin’s core value proposition is that it has a fixed supply.”

PayPal Holdings Inc PYPL said Thursday it would allow all users in the United States to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency and increased the cap on cryptocurrency users can purchase from $10,000 to $20,000 per week, CoinDesk reported separately.

Bitcoin has rallied 129.14% on a year-to-date basis. 

Price Action: Bitcoin traded 4.72% higher at $16,378.17 at press time.