Last Wednesday, a buyer or a group of buyers entered an order on a centralized exchange to buy $1.6 billion worth of bitcoin. That's not nothing – to put it in perspective, that's roughly 4.5% of the average daily volume in the bitcoin spot market over the past two months. It almost immediately sent bitcoin prices skyrocketing 5% to $55,000.

On Sunday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that aims to provide investors with exposure to publicly traded companies with exposure to bitcoin.

Many in the crypto community have speculated that, despite the delays, the approval of a bitcoin ETF could happen by the end of the month. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has also repeatedly suggested that he is not opposed to the idea of a futures-based bitcoin ETF like those proposed by Valkyrie and BlockFi.

At the beginning of the week, Bitcoin is separating itself from alternative cryptocurrencies, rising almost 23% in 7 days to $57,554, bringing its market cap firmly beyond $1 trillion.

Technical Analysis

On the daily chart. We see a formed uptrend channel, within which both the price increase and its retracement to the lower border of the channel took place. Now, BTC price has broken the upper border, which indicates the near-term trend is up, with higher lows bolstering the upward push. The RSI indicator has gone beyond the overbought level, which means that the price pullback may occur.

In the event of an extended breakout, Bitcoin could test the second major resistance level at $60,000 before any pullback.