Bitcoin price returns to $28,000 level after choppy month

The price of bitcoin has risen to $28,000 after trading below this mark for the majority of May.

Since March, bitcoin has been trading in a range between $27,500 and just above $30,000. Since May 10, the coin has been in the lower half of this range, dropping as low as $26,000, according to CoinGecko. Yet a rally in the evening on May 28 has counteracted this.

As a result of largely bitcoin’s efforts, the wider crypto market cap has grown from $1.19 trillion to $1.22 trillion — up 2.6% in the last 24 hours.

A few coins have followed in bitcoin’s progress, with ether and cardano each up 5% and polygon up 9%. Recently hyped memecoin pepe remains flat at around the $0.0000014 mark.

The rising prices follow news that a deal has been made to solve the U.S. debt ceiling problem. The deal will push back the debt ceiling to Jan 1, 2025, according to Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden said the deal takes the “threat of catastrophic default off the table.”

The deal may come as no surprise to Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino, who said on The Block’s The Scoop podcast last week that a debt default would be unlikely because of the extreme consequences that it would have.

It may, however, affect former Bitmex CEO Arthur Hayes’ planning for the year. He said that the timing would be interesting if this deal was reached in the fall — something that would create a powder keg of a situation. But with a deal already in the works, perhaps this year will be a little less volatile.