By
Steve Muchoki
April 23rd, 2024
Cryptocurrency market is at a record high valuation above $250 billion and this time it’s the altcoins and Ethereum contributing to the rally.
In the past week, the cryptocurrency market has witnessed a lot of liquidity and cash flow and unlike every time, this time it’s not Bitcoin at the driving seat, but rather its the surge in altcoins that is riding the crypto market to a record high above $250 billion.
Since the start of this week, there has been a sudden surge in the prices of both Bitcoin derivatives aka Hard Forked cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Cash – and a lot of growing interest is seen in investors for the second most powerful cryptocurrency by market cap – Ethereum.
In the past 24 hours, Wthereum has hit its new record high value at $425.55 according to CoinMarketCap and is currently trading at $406.67. This is for the second time in the year that the price of Ethereum has crossed $400 barrier and continues to be one of the hot picks of investors in the crypto market.
Ever since its inception since 2015, Ethereum – due to its strong fundamentals backed a strong future plan – has made fast inroads by winning the investor’s confidence in such a short period of time.
Ether which was consolidating around $300 during this month’s Bitcoin rally, however, has been on investor’s radar recently and surged almost 25% since the start of this week. One of the major reason that is attributed to this Ethereum rally is the fact that an unknown exchange currently referred as “Virtuoso” is working on having a Bitcoin-like futures contract for Ethereum that is likely to start by the first or the second quarter.
The announcement of Bitcoin futures contract by the CME group was the major reason for Bitcoins historic rally this month taking it from $5000 to above $8000. It the news about Ethereum contract gets some more steam a similar rally can be witnessed in the Ether prices as well.
On the other hand, both the Bitcoin derivatives seem to be having a gala time in the market. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) which was created as a result of first Bitcoin hard fork back in August this year, is currently enjoying a fresh new rally with its price surging by almost 50% in past seven days. According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin Cash is currently trading at $1712.61 and this rally in BCH seems to have been fuelled with a lot of volume coming from South Korea.
The country’s one of the largest exchanges – Bithumb – shows an increase of over 42% in trading volumes in the past 24 hours. Also, another good news for BCH investors is that cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp announced on Wednesday that it would be integrating Bitcoin Cash to its platform from December “in response to the demand.”
Coming to the second derivate – Bitcoin Gold (BTG) – this too is going crazy over the news that Satoshi Labs – a cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer and the maker of Trezor, will integrate BTG into its wallet. In the past seven days, the BTG price has surged by over 200% from a week low of $115 to a week-high of $385.
A huge surge in the trading volumes is being seen and according to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin Gold is currently trading at $348.38. However, the latest scam hit Bitcoin Gold with a suspicious “mybtgwallet” appearing on the BTG website (which has now been pulled down) managed to steal around $3M worth of tokens from the users. Although it looks like the hackers have done to stir investor confidence and even after this news BTG prices have surged by over 20% in the last 24 hours.
With all this going in the crypto markets, one of the rare sights to be seen is that Bitcoin prices are rock solid above $8000 and currently trading at $8173.23. Usually, Bitcoin derivatives and Bitcoin and Ethereum or Bitcoin have always seen opposite price movements, but it looks like Bitcoin still remains the hot pick among investors.
The positivity circulating Bitcoin seems to absolutely intact and renowned personalities have already predicted Bitcoin to be touching $10000 by this year end. So if their word is to be believed, we have yet another Bitcoin rally coming our way.
This year has so far proved to be the best for crypto investors and it seems that the time is not far when some of the top cryptocurrencies will be soon be considered for mainstream adoption as a regular digital currency.