Key takeaways:
- Bitcoin has quickly regained lost ground and has managed to momentarily surpass the $58,000 level
- Ethereum and Polkadot were among the biggest gainers over the last 24 hours
- The total cryptocurrency market cap is only 4% away from surpassing its previous ATH
Bulls had the upper hand over the last 24 hours of trading activity in the cryptocurrency market. The total market capitalization has grown past $2.4 trillion, which is the highest value since mid-May. As such, it is not surprising that only 7 out of 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap are trading in the red zone. Here is a quick recap of today’s main market moves.
Bitcoin momentarily passes $58,000 but the resistance was too strong
After dropping to $55,000 during yesterday’s market action, Bitcoin has quickly recovered and managed to surpass the key $58,000 resistance level, however, it didn’t manage to hold that price point for long.
Earlier today, the price of Bitcoin has fallen as low as $54,550, before increasing to a 24-hour high of $58,400. BTC has now resumed its two-week-long rally, which saw the world’s largest crypto go from $41,400 on September 29 to $57,530 at the time of this writing.
It will be interesting to observe where we go from here. Some analysts, such as the prominent BTC maximalist Tone Vays for instance, are convinced we will see BTC continue to rally and reach $100K by the end of 2021. Interestingly, BTC is the closest to its all-time high price out of the top 100 largest digital assets.
Ethereum reaches a 5-week high on the tailwind of a 9% gain
After Ethereum suffered a nearly 15% loss during a flash crash that wiped out roughly $400 billion from the market due to a cascading effect of ‘long’ position liquidations on September 7, the second-largest crypto took a long time to recover. By the end of September, ETH was still hurting and trading below the $3,000 mark.
The trend got reversed with the start of October as ETH went from $3,040 on October 1 to $3,650 on October 7. Since then, ETH was trading in a relatively tight range and experienced mostly sideways trading activity.
The week-long trend got broken with today’s nearly 10% price increase. From its lowest point during the last 24 hours, Ethereum has gained nearly $400 in value and is trading at $3,765 at press time.
Polkadot is today’s biggest gainer thanks to the parachain auction announcement
It was a long time coming, but Polkadot parachain auctions are finally here. Polkadot Council has voted on a proposal for the first two batches of auctions, which will begin in mid-November. Decentralized crypto projects will compete for a slot allocation, which will let them build on the Polkadot network for a duration of 96 weeks.
Following the announcement, the price of DOT quickly surged to a 5-week high of $42.9, before retracing to $40.6 at the time of this writing. In the span of 4 hours, DOT increased by over 20%, which was enough the make Polkadot the largest gainer among the top 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.
The total crypto market cap reaches a 5-month high of $2.43 trillion
Given the large increase in prices of multiple major digital assets, it was to be expected that the total market cap followed suit. Market capitalization has increased by 5.76% in the last 24 hours and reached the highest value since mid-May.
The highest market valuation that the crypto market has ever reached came in May, when the total value reached a peak of $2.52 trillion. If the market increases “only” by an additional 4% from where we are currently, we will witness the highest market cap in the history of the cryptocurrency industry.
