Bitcoin’s price fluctuated but eventually settled above $30.1K as investors considered ETF possibilities and macroeconomic data.

After two days of increasing excitement over spot bitcoin ETFs, the price of bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has stopped rising.

BTC was recently trading at around $30,180, roughly where it was 24 hours ago when investor optimism surged after three financial services powerhouses, including BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager – applied for BTC spot ETFs. Bitcoin briefly dropped to about $29,575 early Thursday after cryptocurrency custodian BitGo terminated its acquisition of rival Prime Trust – a rare negative note in an otherwise positive week – but quickly rose again.

In an email to blockchain, Edward Moya, senior market analyst for foreign exchange market maker Oanda, emphasized that crypto has gained momentum recently amid growing concerns about central banks’ efforts to control inflation and their impact on economic expansion.

“Wall Street is becoming a little pessimistic regarding the global growth outlook as global central bank tightening enters a new phase, which all of sudden has made crypto look a little bit more attractive,” Moya wrote, although he cautiously suggested that the current rise in cryptos could wane.

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“Bitcoin needs to lead the charge higher over the next few days for momentum buying to kick in,” Moya wrote.

Read More: BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Would Be a Big Deal

Ether (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market value, followed a similar path to BTC, dropping around the time of the BitGo announcement via Twitter but then recovering to trade recently near the $1,900 threshold it reached on Wednesday for the first time since the beginning of June. ETH was recently up a few fractions of a percentage point. Most other major cryptocurrencies were largely positive, but not as impressive as the previous day. ADA and DOT, the tokens of smart contract protocols Cardano and Polkadot, were up more than 2% and 1%, respectively.

The Blockchain Market Index, a measure of crypto market performance, recently rose 0.2%.

US stock indexes were mixed, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 rising 0.8% and 0.2%, respectively, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) ticking down slightly. Investors seemed to ignore the Bank of England’s 50 basis point (bps) rate hike, which diverged from other central banks’ recent dovishness. Inflation in the UK remained stubbornly high at 8.7% in May.

Crypto markets also seemed largely unconcerned by hawkish comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who reiterated the bank’s intention to raise interest rates later this year. The Fed ended more than a year of rate hikes earlier this month. The latest weekly jobless claims report had little impact on assets, coming in just a few thousand claims higher than expected.

Read More: A Straightforward Explanation for Why Financial Giants Want to Issue a Spot Bitcoin ETF

In an email to blockchain, Bob Baxley, the CTO of decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure provider Maverick Protocol, noted a “narrative shift that is likely to propel the digital asset industry forward in a way that just wasn’t on our collective radar only a week or so ago.”

“It’s almost certain that a bitcoin ETF will get approved – either BlackRock’s or any of the flurry of other recent filings – and it’s clear that a large number of heavyweights in traditional finance want exposure to the digital asset industry more generally,” Baxley wrote, adding that he will also be interested to see how Ethereum performs in upcoming months.

“There’s just so much energy in this ecosystem given the tremendous amount of developer activity across a growing number of functionalities,” he wrote. “You have DeFi and NFTs, of course, but also a whole host of new applications and layer 2s that are getting built out at breakneck speed.”

Read More: BlackRock Executive: Knowing Who Counterparties Are Is Key to Engaging Institutions in DeFi

Edited by James Rubin.

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