MARKET NEWS

By Amanda Cooper

LONDON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Bitcoin surged for a fifth day on Wednesday to near $60,000, buoyed by flows into new U.S. spot bitcoin exchange traded products that have driven it up nearly 40% in February, which would mark its largest monthly rally since December 2020. Bitcoin was last up 4.5% at $59,244, its highest since December 2021.

Traders have poured into bitcoin ahead of April's halving event - a process designed to slow the release of the cryptocurrency. In addition, the prospect of the Federal Reserve delivering a series of rate cuts this year has fed investor appetite for higher-yielding or more volatile assets.

"Bitcoin is being driven by the support of consistent inflows into the new spot ETFs and outlook for April's halving event and June's Fed interest rate cuts," Ben Laidler, global markets strategist at retail investment platform eToro, said.

The value of all the bitcoin in circulation has topped $2 trillion this month for the first time in two years, according to crypto platform CoinGecko, while the price of the token itself has doubled in just four months.

The bigger bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have seen a definite pickup in interest this week. The three most popular, run by Grayscale , Fidelity and BlackRock (IBIT.O) have seen trading volumes surge. On Monday and Tuesday, around 110 million shares in the biggest three changed hands, about 51% of the 215 million shares traded in the market's most valuable companies - Apple (AAPL.O)

Crypto investor and software firm MicroStrategy (MSTR.O) earlier this week disclosed it had recently bought about 3,000 bitcoins for $155 million, while social media platform Reddit also said in a regulatory filing it had bought small amounts of bitcoin and ether. 

Meanwhile, the world's second biggest crypto currency ether, , which underpins the Ethereum blockchain network, rose 2.2% to $3,320, having hit another two-year high earlier in the day. The price has risen 47% in February, the biggest monthly gain since a 70% rally in July 2022. Some investors are hoping U.S. regulators will approve applications for ETFs based on spot ether. Enigma Securities' Edwards said the run higher felt reasonably steady. "There certainly isn't a manic feeling to who's buying and why - ether gaining against the field also speaks to a more measured environment - but there's at least a little FOMO (fear of missing out) going on right now," he said.

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft in London and Medha Singh in Bangalore; Editing by Alun John and Tomasz Janowski