The long, drawn-out period which has lasted several months in which Bitcoin, previously as volatile as a piece of magnesium ribbon over a naked flame, has been utterly stagnant.

The days of $60,000 values and cliffhanger tweets by influencers suddenly crashing and inflating the value of the world's most valuable cryptocurrency seem a distant memory.

If 2021 was the year of the Bitcoin-related rollercoaster ride, 2022 has been a year of absolute hibernation, representing a contrast so great that it is hard to imagine that it is the same investment vehicle.

The doldrums which have existed for a few months now have been dubbed 'crypto winter' by analysts and journalists, a term used to depict the low values and lack of market movement which has overshadowed the previous enthuaiasm for Bitcoin trading.

Today, however, during the Asian session, Bitcoin suddenly rose in value by a substantial amount, to $21,382 by 2.25am UK time.

On Thursday last week, Bitcoin was languishing at $18,880 therefore the rise over just 3 working days has been over $2,000.

As the price of Bitcoin headed toward the $20,000 mark at the beginning of this week, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization figure began to approach £1 trillion.

This is the first time that Bitcoin has passed the $20,000 mark since before the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November.

Last week, cryptocurrencies began to rise in value, with Ethereum, the world's second most popular cryptocurrency, having also increased its capitalization leading to a speculation among some analysts that the crypto winter may be over and some degree of resurgence is beginning.

Of course, these small increases are a far cry from the huge surges in value experienced in 2021, but they are significant when considering the totally flat values that have been in place for a few months.

Crypto-denominated stocks are also on the up, largely due to the sudden bullish approach to cryptocurrencies that has come about, and some pundits are considering that the lingering issue of continued inflation among centrally issued currencies and centralized economies dogged by recessions and rising costs are waking up the prices of cryptocurrencies as people look toward another year of high costs and depreciating fiat currencies and search for alternatives.

These opinions all amount to guesswork, however, but what is for sure is that there is a definitive sudden interest in cryptocurrencies once again and that is clearly demonstrated by looking at the chart patterns this morning.

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