Crypto news: Bitcoin price surges past US$60,000 mark, Bank of England warns that crypto crash could cause global financial crisis

Crypto investors should be in a good mood heading into the well-deserved weekend. The biggest cryptocurrency Bitcoin has further gained steam and has now surpassed the psychologically important US$60,000 mark for the first time in half a year. At the time of publication of this article, one bitcoin is worth around US$62,266.

These continuous gains of Bitcoin, which jumped by more than 4 percent in just the last 24 hours, can mostly be attributed to the expectations that the SEC could approve the first Bitcoin ETF in the USA next week. Should such expectations be met, the Bitcoin could possibly challenge its all-time high near the US$65,000 mark that was achieved earlier this year. However, should the SEC decide not to approve the ProShares Bitcoin ETF, an expert from CNBC expects the Bitcoin to fall sharply. Bitcoin ETFs have already been approved in Europe and other regions of the world.

An official at the Bank of England on the other hand warns that a crash of the exponentially growing crypto market that is currently valued at US$2.3 trillion could trigger a severe and global financial crisis like the world has last seen in the year of 2008. He claims that the extremely volatile price of Bitcoin, which has dropped at least 10 percent on 30 occasions over the course of the past five years, could quickly cause massive capital losses by investors who could presumably start panic selling their assets because of the crypto market's increasingly prominent knock-on impact on the real economy.

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