By
Temitope Olatunji
April 26th, 2024
The world’s two largest cryptocurrencies are once again leading the overall crypto market by sending clear signals of the beginning of the next major crypto bull run.
In what could be the beginning of the next mega bull run, the overall cryptocurrency market cap has shot past $3 trillion. The recent rally has been led by the world’s two largest cryptos – Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
The BTC price has surged past $68,000 levels entering into a new price discovery zone. As of press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $67,536 with a market cap of $1.278 trillion. Based on the historical trends and post-halving period, the BTC price is likely to reach $100K levels by the year-end. However, the author of the stock-to-flow (S2F) model PlanB notes that the Bitcoin price can reach as high as $288K.
As you know S2F model predicts $100K average for this halving period (and based on floor model we reach $100K this yr). But S2FX model predicts $288K average this cycle (we need some real fireworks in 2022 for that). Let's see where this 2nd leg of the bull market will take us🚀 pic.twitter.com/ttiNT5yMKe
— PlanB (@100trillionUSD) November 8, 2021
The recent Bitcoin price rally comes on the launch of Bitcoin derivative products like the Bitcoin futures contracts. Besides, the arrival of spot Bitcoin ETFs by next year can bring higher institutional liquidity into the crypto space. Speaking to CNBC, Mikkel Morch, executive director at crypto hedge fund ARK36, believes $70,000 for BTC looks imminent. He added:
“Importantly, the uptick doesn’t seem to be leverage-driven but rather results from the increased demand on the spot market where there’s currently very little sell-side liquidity”.
Two Largest Cryptos Moving Higher: Ethereum Follows Bitcoin’s Footsteps
Over the last few months, Ethereum (ETH) has been closely following up with BTC gains. The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency also touched a new all-time high above $4,800 levels.
As of press time, ETH is trading at $4,820 levels with a market cap of $570 billion. If the ETH price rally continues, $5000 looks imminent as of now. Many analysts are bullish about the largest cryptos and have already given higher price targets of $10K and above for Ethereum.
The Ethereum (ETH) price rally this year has been backed by the rapidly rising demand in decentralized finance (DeFi). DeFi is the latest trend in the market that allows for building financial applications for trading and lending on the blockchain network.
Ethereum has been one of the key players in the DeFi space. The total value locked of all DeFi protocols on Ethereum is currently $185 billion. Besides, the Ethereum blockchain hosts some of the most popular decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and lending platforms like Aave.
Apart from DeFi, the Ethereum blockchain has also witnessed a high NFT activity on the platform. Popular Ethereum-based NFT platforms like OpenSea have conducted sales worth millions of dollars this year. Furthermore, the developments around Ethereum 2.0 are going pretty strong. The Ethereum 2.0 is likely to solve much of the scalability issues on the blockchain along with reducing the transactions costs.