Bitcoin on Tuesday traded at its highest level since April 2022, with the rally helping to fuel gains in smaller cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency
BTCUSD,
by market cap, rose over 4.2% during the past 24 hours to above $44,000 briefly on Tuesday, according to CoinDesk data. It is up 13.4% during the past seven days, and up 157% year-to-date. The crypto is still down over 35% from its peak in 2021.
Ether
ETHUSD,
went up 1.9% over the past 24 hours to briefly trade above $2,300 on Tuesday, its highest level since May 2022. The crypto was up 1.9% over the past 24 hours and up 10.5% over the past seven days.
But smaller tokens also have seen price appreciation and increased trading activity. The market share of the trade volume for “altcoins,” or cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin and ether, jumped to 67% last week, the highest level since March 2022, according to analysts at Kaiko Research.
That is because “traders continued rotating into riskier assets amid an ongoing rally,” the analysts wrote in a Monday note.
XRP
XRPUSD,
rose 1.7% over the past seven-day stretch to around $0.62, despite a 0.2% dip over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data. Solana
SOLUSD,
went up 5.7% during the past seven days to around $61 on Tuesday, while logging a 0.9% decline during the past 24 hours. Cardano
ADAUSD,
advanced 4.6% over the past 24 hours to about $0.42, contributing to a 8% gain for the past seven days.
Binance coin dipped 0.3% during the past 24 hours and was unchanged from seven days ago, after Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao in November pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of violating the U.S. bank secrecy act, and agreed to step down as head of the company. Binance also was fined $4.3 billion.
Yet, meme tokens rose, with Dogecoin
DOGEUSD,
up 4.9% over the past 24 hours and up 14% over the past seven days to around $0.09. Shiba Inu
SHIBUSD,
gained 12.4% over the past seven days, up 4% over the last 24 hours to about $0.000009.
Optimism around regulatory approval for bitcoin ETFs has contributed to a powerful rally in bitcoin this fall, but so has the expectation of rate cuts next year by the Federal Reserve, even through the crypto industry has been hit with a series of high-profile scandals.
Read: Binance boss pleads guilty, steps down, but crypto bulls still see promise in another black eye for the industry
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