Bitcoin bulls restart year-end target, BTC breaks 62K

Bitcoin (BTC) fell back after briefly breaking through 62,000 during the Asian morning hours on Friday, on the back of a broader market rebound that reversed a sharp decline earlier in the week. Some Bitcoin bulls are revisiting their year-end 100,000 target.

Us markets rebounded on Thursday, with the S&P 500 Posting its best day since November 2022, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose 3.1 per cent. That helped reverse Monday's sharp declines, when stock indexes and cryptocurrencies saw significant losses.

BTC is up 7.2% in the last 24 hours, which is one of the biggest one-day percentage gains in recent months. The rise led to the liquidation of nearly $100 million in short positions (bearish bets) in the futures market that tracks bitcoin. The $100 million liquidation is the fourth largest hit to short bitcoin positions this year.

Some market watchers attributed the rise to better stock market sentiment and expectations that BTC reflects its past market cycles.

"Now that the Bank of Japan says they won't raise rates any further - and Jump Trading will be unable to continue selling coins like Germany a few weeks ago - I don't think prices will break below $50,000 (except for a brief dip) and may never break below that level again." Transform Ventures founder Michael Terpin told CoinDesk in an email on Friday.

"Regardless of the next 60 days, the bull market will continue along the traditional four-year cycle line with solid gains in October and November," he added.

"If Trump wins, an influx of new buyers could push bitcoin above $100,000," Terpin said, adding that there is usually a pullback within six months of a half-cut, and this fifth Bitcoin cycle is no exception. "October and November have historically been strong months for Bitcoin, especially in half-down years and the following year," he said.

The rise in BTC pushed most major tokens to gains. Ether (ETH) and Titan (TON) are up 10%, while Solana's SOL and Cardano's ADA are up 5%. XRP retreated slightly after rising 17 percent on Thursday, possibly on profit-taking.

The broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index - a liquidity index that tracks the largest tokens by market capitalization (excluding stablecoins) - was up 5.35%.