Bitcoin held near $34,500 after a 15% weekly advance

Bitcoin remained near $34,500 on October 29, 2023, preserving most of a sharp weekly advance that had pushed the asset to its highest area in roughly 18 months. CoinMarketCap’s October 29 historical snapshot recorded bitcoin at $34,538.48, up 1.32% over 24 hours and 15.15% over seven days. The same snapshot showed a market capitalization of $674.46 billion and reported $11.16 billion of 24-hour volume.

That was the date’s clearest consequential crypto development: not a new regulatory approval, but the market’s ability to hold a repricing driven by expectations of one. U.S. regulators had not approved a spot bitcoin exchange-traded product by October 29. The distinction mattered because the price move reflected positioning and anticipation, not a completed change in market access.

What the weekly comparison shows

CoinMarketCap’s October 22 snapshot placed bitcoin at $29,993.90. Comparing that figure with the October 29 snapshot produces a 15.15% increase, matching the aggregator’s reported seven-day change after rounding. The calculation is simple: $34,538.48 divided by $29,993.90, minus one.

The endpoint also matters. Bitcoin trades continuously across many venues, so “close” can create false precision unless a venue and daily boundary are specified. These figures are CoinMarketCap historical snapshots in U.S. dollars, not an official closing auction and not a single-exchange execution price. Market capitalization is the provider’s price multiplied by its circulating-supply estimate; reported volume aggregates the markets included in its methodology.

The October 29 table showed the move was broader than bitcoin but still bitcoin-led. Ether was listed at $1,795.55, up 7.94% over seven days, while bitcoin’s 15.15% gain was nearly twice that rate. Bitcoin therefore strengthened relative to ether during the measurement window, consistent with a rally centered on the prospects for a bitcoin-specific regulated product.

Why ETF expectations mattered

A concrete legal development preceded the move. On October 23, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued its formal mandate in Grayscale Investments’ case against the Securities and Exchange Commission. The mandate put into effect the court’s August 29 judgment vacating the SEC’s rejection of Grayscale’s proposed conversion of GBTC into an exchange-traded product and returning the matter to the agency.

That did not order the SEC to approve GBTC, and it did not approve any other application. It did, however, remove the immediate appellate uncertainty after the SEC declined to seek rehearing. By October 29, the market was assigning significance to the possibility that the agency would have to reconsider its approach to spot bitcoin products.

Coinbase Institutional’s October 27 commentary attributed the week’s bitcoin strength largely to spot-ETF speculation. Its analysts also cautioned that the appearance of BlackRock’s proposed IBTC ticker on a Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation list had no bearing on regulatory approval and said the entry had been present since August. That warning is important: operational listings and preparatory filings were evidence of issuer readiness, not evidence of SEC consent.

Liquidity and institutional positioning

Coinbase reported that average daily bitcoin-and-ether trading volume across global spot and derivatives markets rose to $47 billion in October from $31 billion in September. It also said CME bitcoin futures open interest and volume reached multi-year highs during the week. Those are contemporaneous company estimates, not a complete audit of every venue, and the published commentary does not provide enough methodology to independently reproduce the totals.

The stronger conclusion is narrower. By October 29, bitcoin had moved decisively above its October 22 level and retained that gain through the weekly snapshot while regulated-product expectations dominated institutional commentary. The data establish the repricing; they do not establish that ETF approval was certain, that speculation was the only cause, or that the new price level would persist.