A cryptocurrency sector battered by turmoil last year is showing some signs of life early in 2023, posting bigger gains than other asset classes like stocks, bonds and gold.
“There’s a faint heartbeat—the patient’s not dead,” said Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG Australia, referring to six straight days of increases in the Bitcoin price, the best streak since February 2022. An upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain, crypto’s major commercial highway, is also engendering optimism. The upgrade, called Shanghai, may materialize in March. It will allow investors to withdraw Ether they locked up to help operate the network. The latter process is known as staking and earns rewards.SOME crypto protocols seek to provide easier and more flexible access to staking rewards, and coins linked to them have surged.