Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is expected to rise 10.4% on a weekly basis, helped by strong inflows into spot bitcoin exchange-trade funds, as volatility increases in the run-up to the U.S. Presidential Election.

The cryptocurrency started the week strongly, and breached the $65K mark on Monday, with a sizable jump on the heels of China's latest economic stimulus plan that offered scant details.

BTC then surpassed $67K on Tuesday for the first time in more than two months.

The U.S. presidential race is another catalyst propping up crypto prices. In the past few days, prediction markets have shifted, now giving pro-crypto Republican candidate Donald Trump better odds of winning than his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

"A continued rebound in Trump's election odds plus positive macro sentiment continues to buoy crypto price action. BTC ETF has seen 5 consecutive days of positive inflows with Wednesday & Thursday both seeing over 450M of net buying," said Augustine Fan, Head of Insights, SOFA.org.

In an eye-catching move, $559.9M flowed into 11 spot bitcoin ETFs on Monday, the largest amount since early June, according to data from London-based Farside Investors. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), the largest bitcoin fund, drew in $79.5M of that total.

"Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF inflows have jumped in the last week, which likely caused their prices to jump, and we haven't seen any macro factors that could've caused this," said Jeff Mei, COO at crypto exchange, BTSE.

"The inflows are almost certainly due to euphoria leading up to the U.S. Presidential Election, as historically, volatility increases by about 20% in the time frame leading up to and after a Presidential election," Mei added.

Notable News

• 25-year-old Eric Council Jr. was arrested, and charged with allegedly hacking the U.S. SEC's X account in January and posting a fake post regarding bitcoin (BTC-USD) exchange-traded funds, according to the Department of Justice.
• Deputy Finance Minister Maurizio Leo said that Italy plans to hike capital gains tax on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC-USD) to 42% from 26%.
• Elon Musk's Tesla (TSLA) has reportedly transferred almost all $760M of bitcoins (BTC-USD) that it owns to unidentified wallets.
• World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency project backed by U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his family, started with some hiccups, as the website suffered numerous outages after going live and the public sale of the new WLFI token trailed the $300M fundraising goal by a wide margin.

Bitcoin, Ether prices

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) rose 3% to ~$69K, as it hovered near the $70K mark at 3:16 pm on Friday. Ether (ETH-USD) up 2.9% at $2.7K.

Bitcoin’s price surged to levels not seen since July, fueled by positive inflows and optimism around a potential bullish breakout, said SA analyst Dean Popplewell, adding, "Technical analysis shows Bitcoin facing resistance at various levels, with support levels identified in case of a price decline."