U.S. crypto-related stocks looked set to start the week on a positive note after bitcoin (BTC) climbed through $72,000 for the first time since mid-March as its reward halving draws closer.

Coinbase (COIN), the only U.S. traded crypto exchange, added 4.9% in pre-market trading, MicroStrategy (MSTR), the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, rose 10% and BlackRock’s bitcoin exchange-traded fund (IBIT), added around 6.5%.

The CoinDesk 20 Index, a measure of the broader crypto market, rose 3.1% over 24 hours.

The halving, which cuts the amount bitcoin miners are paid for adding blocks to the blockchain by 50%, is on track for April 20. After it occurs, they will be rewarded with 3.125 BTC per block.

Among miners, Marathon Digital (MARA) added 5.2% and Hut 8 (HUT), which merged with USBTC at the end of last year, gained 5.6%. Argo Blockchain (ARB), trading on the London Stock Exchange, rose 5%.

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Sheldon Reback

Sheldon Reback is CoinDesk's European news editor. Before joining the company, he spent 26 years as an editor at Bloomberg News, where he worked on beats as diverse as stock markets and the retail industry as well as covering the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002. He subsequently managed the Bloomberg Terminal's main news page before becoming the European editor for a global project to produce short, chart-based stories across the newsroom. His previous work as a journalist took him to Hong Kong, where he reported and edited for several technology magazines, and he also has experience in market research and writing computer manuals. Sheldon has an MBA from the London Business School and an industrial chemistry degree from Brunel University. He owns a small amount of ether.