Bitcoin just had its best month since 2020

Bitcoin is not just having a good week, surging to its highest levels since late 2021, it’s also having a good month. A great month, actually: It’s up more than 40% in February, the cryptocurrency’s best performance since December 2020.

Lots of things are driving the monthly boomlet. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved spot bitcoin exchange-traded-funds. The news is drawing a lot of new investors into the market, spurred on by all the attendant hype that comes with a new means of getting in on the action.

Plus, the so-called “halving” is coming soon. In bitcoin world, that means that bitcoin-mining computers will yield half as much of the cryptocurrency when they do the complex equations that create new coins. (In the U.S., the Energy Information Administration noted earlier this month that all that computer activity makes up as much as 2% of all energy use.) Halving typically leads to more hype, more investor interest, and more gains.

Stocks associated with bitcoin are reaping the benefits of its big February as well. Stock in the trading exchange Coinbase and the mining company Marathon Digital Holdings are way up, too. There was so much new activity happening on Coinbase that the company suffered a brief outage Wednesday (Feb. 28).