Coinbase, Hut 8 lead crypto stocks higher as bitcoin inches towards $70,000 level

Bitcoin is on pace for its best weekly performance in over a month, with the world's largest cryptocurrency inching closer to reclaiming the $70,000 level.

For the week, the price of bitcoin is up about 9% and trading around $68,800 at time of writing. Ethereum follows closely behind with a gain of 8.3% over the same period while Solana is up 7.2%, according to The Block's price page. Those gains outpace the rise in traditional market indices like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, which are up less than 1% over the past five trading sessions.

Still, the three major averages closed with their sixth straight positive week, which marks the longest string of weekly advances in 2024 for both the Dow and S&P 500, according to CNBC.

Bitcoin's strong move on Friday was a boon for crypto-related stocks and exchange-traded funds.

Bitcoin miners Hive Digital (ticker: HIVE) and Hut 8 (HUT) led the way, each up nearly 15% on the day. Larger peers such as CleanSpark (CLSK), Riot Platforms (RIOT) and Bitfarms (BITF) gained between 7-10%.

Other crypto-stocks including Coinbase (COIN) rose nearly 8% while corporate bitcoin holder MicroStrategy (MSTR) shares rose more than 11%.

Over the past 24 hours, total liquidations across centralized exchanges amounted to $113 million, according to data from Coinglass. Bitcoin was the leading crypto in terms of liquidations, with $30 million in liquidated positions over the past day. Earlier this week, bitcoin's rebound to the $68,000 level triggered nearly $300 million worth of liquidations in a single day.

On Wall Street

Big banks like JPMorgan and Morgan Stanely unofficially kicked off the third-quarter earnings season over the past two weeks, beating profit estimates nearly across the board. Meanwhile, BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink spoke positively about bitcoin during the asset manager's third-quarter conference call on Oct 11.

"I do believe the utilization of assets are going to become more and more of a reality worldwide," Fink said during the call. "Conversations we're having with institutions worldwide, conversations about how should they think about digital assets, what type of asset allocation there should be. I mean, we believe Bitcoin is an asset class in itself."

BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT), the largest spot bitcoin ETF by net assets, has seen net inflows of over $1.07 billion this week through Thursday's close, which could mark its largest weekly inflow since mid-March.

Earnings reports from several crypto-related companies will be out within the next few weeks, with Coinbase, MicroStrategy and Riot Platforms all expected on Oct. 30.