Today, the cryptocurrency market has a value of more than $3 trillion.
Since its infancy, digital assets have already quadrupled in value from their 2020 end value. This is because investors are more comfortable using established tokens like Bitcoin while networks like Ethereum or Solana keep upgrading and attracting new functionality. There is excitement over the potential of decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens and continues to be a lot of attention on memecoins like Shiba Inu or Dogecoin.
“Bitcoin appears to be pushing out of a bullish flag pattern, and Ether is likely to confirm a long-term breakout on a close above resistance this Friday,” said Katie Stockton, founder and managing partner of Fairlead Strategies, in a note.
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CoinGecko pricing showed that the market cap for cryptocurrency was at $3 trillion as of New York City’s 4:15 AM. Binance Coin (the third largest) and Solana (the fourth biggest), have both increased more than 20% each in the last seven days. Over the week, all seven major coins were up.
Bitcoin rose 5.8% to $66,539 on Monday, just shy of its old record of $67,000. Ether gained as high as 3.6%, reaching a record $4,7958.
Bitcoin miners Riot Blockchain Inc., Marathon Digital Holdings Inc., and Riot Blockchain Inc. all rallied above 10% Monday. Coinbase Global Inc. was the biggest U.S. exchange and gained 3.6% a day prior to reporting its third quarter results.
It is not surprising that crypto can be volatile. The last time Bitcoin reached these levels, it fell back several thousand dollars, and it’s undergone multiple corrections that take it down by half or more. Other coins are even more volatile — the memecoins bounce back and forth wildly at times — and scams and hacks occur with some frequency.
Bitcoin’s current rally has been fueled by the U.S. trading debut of a Bitcoin-linked ETF as well as Elon Musk’s weekend Twitter poll, said Ben Caselin, head of research and strategy at crypto exchange AAX. “With Shiba and other memecoins having surged recently, and Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, interest in altcoins continues to rise.”
–With assistance from Emily Graffeo.
