Bitcoin marketcap rockets past $100 billion: will $6,400 confirm bull market?

In the past 24 hours, the bitcoin price spiked from around $5,374 to $5,778 on regulated fiat crypto exchanges like Coinbase in the U.S., surging past $5,800 in several other markets.

The 5 percent upside movement of bitcoin led the market capitalization of the dominant crypto asset to surpass the monumental $100 billion mark.

Although the bitcoin price remains down by about 72 percent from its all-time high achieved in January 2018, according to global markets analyst Alex Krüger, a potential move past $6,400 would signal the beginning of a bull market.

In recent months, after recording a gain of over 50 percent year-to-date, the sentiment around bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market has noticeably improved, as shown in the newly released research paper of Fidelity Digital Assets.

"According to the survey, about 22% of institutional investors already have some exposure to digital assets, with most investments having been made within the past three years. Four in ten respondents say they are open to future investments in digital assets over the next five years."

Based on its findings, Fidelity Digital Assets said that it expects the inflow of institutional capital into the crypto market to increase over the next five years.

The research of Fidelity comes after prominent investors in the crypto market in the likes of Ari Paul said that they may have been too optimistic about the rate in which institutions would enter the crypto market in the medium-term.

While other factors apart from institutional interest could affect the short to medium term trend of bitcoin, if the asset moves past $6,400, Krüger noted that it would allow the market to overcome its 16-month bear market and mark the start to a new bull market.

The rise in the interest towards bitcoin in the past several days has led the real volume of the asset to climb above $1 billion, based on the data provided by OpenMarketCap.

The key indicator for the start of a sustainable bull run is likely a decoupling of asset values from Bitcoin.