Bitcoin Gains Spark Bullish Call of ‘$15T Asset;’ BTC Forks Jump

Bitcoin (BTC) neared the $28,000 mark early Monday before retreating as crypto bulls seemed to bet on hopes of a major spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) going live in the U.S. in the coming months.

Bearish trades among bitcoin futures cost traders some $27 million within a few hours on the move during Asian morning hours. Open interest – the number of unsettled futures contracts, which may indicate market liquidity – rose 6.7%, showing improved trader participation over the past 12 hours.

Popular crypto investor Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and managing partner at SkyBridge Capital, said in a podcast he expected bitcoin to eventually become a $15 trillion asset over the coming years, calling it “more valuable than gold.”

Bitcoin led gains among major tokens, with Solana’s SOL and Tron’s TRX also climbing. SOL jumped as a bankruptcy estate for beleaguered crypto exchange FTX – which holds billions worth of SOL – staked nearly 10% of its holdings, damping fears of a token sell-off.

Among other alternative tokens, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV), both bitcoin forks, gained as much as 11% while crypto casino Rollbit’s RLB tokens surged as much as 14%.

Elsewhere, crypto game Big Time’s BIGTIME tokens jumped 350% shortly after listing on influential exchange Coinbase (COIN). However, analysts at Delphi Digital said they considered the token an "extremely risky asset to be trading right now."

"Before touching on some of the game-related concerns, it is important to point out that it is incredibly hard to find any reliable sources on what BIGTIME tokenomics looks like," analyst Joseph Lloyd said in a client note shared with CoinDesk. "There is no vesting schedule, no mention of allocations, and no concrete info on the current circulating supply (will update when we have this info). All we know is that so far, approximately 5% of the total supply has been airdropped to players and is being actively traded on the open market."