Gertrude Chavez–Dreyfuss & Ritvik Karvalho

NEW YORK/LONDON –, world’s biggest cyrptocurrency by market value, rose Tuesday. It crossed the $50,000 threshold for the first times in 4 weeks.

At the beginning of September, bitcoin was below $50,000 because there was a wide sell-off in crypto and blockchain-related shares. Further, it fell in September to a low point of $40,596 by Sept. 21.

Bitcoin reached $50,400 Tuesday. Bitcoin was at its highest level of 1.2%, $49,840.

The price of smaller coins which move with bitcoin was also higher. Ether was up 1.5% at $3,434; it was 2.2% higher at $1.0656.

Participants in the market cited institutional services buying as a reason for investor demand for cryptocurrency.

U.S. Bancorp, a bank in America, announced Tuesday that it has launched a crypto custody service for investment managers with private funds in the United States or Cayman Islands.

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:) has published Monday its first research covering cryptocurrencies and digital assets. It is also helping other major financial institutions to strengthen their participation in the asset class.

Martha Reyes (head of research, digital asset prime brokerage, and exchange BEQUANT) stated that “the banks are giving up one by one.”

“For us who work in this space, it is not news that the problem is too large to ignore. And regulators are certainly not ignoring it.”

The sector has seen strong investment flows, with the exception of a few slow months during the summer.

As institutional investors sought more support from regulators, cryptocurrency funds and investment products saw inflows record for the seventh consecutive week. This was according to data released by CoinShares on Monday.

Coindesk is a crypto specialist and research company that has released a market review showing a 25% increase for bitcoin and a 32% increase for ether in the third quarter.

Report also mentioned the rise in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), that use blockchain technology to track the ownership of digital objects such as images and videos.

NFT sales soared to $10.7 million in Q3.