Things got a little tense in the cryptocurrency market yesterday. Finally launched the very first bitcoin (BTC) exchange traded fund (ETF) in the US, a futures ETF then. The fear was that the volume might disappoint, but the investment product was a great success on the first day. As a result, bitcoin resumed its rally and crypto’s total market cap briefly peaked at $2,645 trillion last night, very close to the May record.
$BITO already in the top 30% of ETFs by assets and a near-lock to exceed my $750m by end-of-week estimate.. https://t.co/uJm88w0zx0
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) October 19, 2021
Bitcoin
Bitcoin (BTC) has been in a strong rally for some time now. That rally cooled slightly over the weekend when bitcoin touched $63,000 for the first time since April on Friday. Still, bitcoin held steady above USD 61,000, closing the week at an all-time high. On Monday, the price once again touched $63,000, but was unable to break through it yet. Yesterday, the futures ETF successfully launched and bitcoin started to climb again. The price broke through $63,000 towards the evening and then immediately through $64,000.
99.705% of the #Bitcoin supply is currently in profit.
Congratulations to all $BTC HODLers on the highest daily market close in history.
Live Chart: https://t.co/D6F6jLWVdN pic.twitter.com/k2wj8hgNgG
— glassnode (@glassnode) October 20, 2021
At around 2 a.m., bitcoin briefly reached a price of $64,600. That’s just under the all time high (ATH) of $64,800 as of April 14. The price was only 0.3% away from this ATH. Since then, bitcoin has held up fairly well at around $64,000, so it seems likely that bitcoin will set a new record this week, perhaps even today. Bitcoin’s dominance is rising slightly again, approaching 46% while its total market cap is now above $1.2 trillion.
Same as in 2013, it took almost 200 days to get back close to #Bitcoin‘s all-time high after a mid bull run drawdown.
If the rest of the year is remotely close to what we had in the 1st cycle then things are about to get pic.twitter.com/vvsVoyRgfw
— ecoinometrics (@ecoinometrics) October 20, 2021
altcoins
Ethereum (ETH) along with most altcoins is lagging slightly today. Ether price failed to hold at $3,900 over the weekend and Monday and fell back to $3,700. Yesterday, ether climbed back to USD 3,800 and shortly after midnight, when bitcoin also peaked, ether briefly jumped towards USD 3,900, but that turned out to be a bridge too far for now. However, it seems likely that as soon as bitcoin cools slightly, the volume will spill over to ether and that price may also break out.
Just outside the top 10 we also see terra (LUNA) rising again and the 11e recapture place of shiba inu (SHIB). LUNA price is up 6% and currently stands at $38.5. Cosmos (ATOM), near (NEAR), harmony (ONE) and hedera hashgraph (HBAR) are also about 6 to 7% in the plus.
Notably, a number of cryptocurrency exchange tokens are performing best today. KuCoin token (KCS) is 9% in the plus, huobi token (HT) 10% and OKB (OKB) even 25%. This crypto plummeted in September due to the ban in China, but the prices now seem to break out again.
The first project of OKEx new IEO is the card game Gods Unchained which invested by Coinbase. Holders of OKB can participate in farming. It caused OKB to rise by 25% in 24 hours.
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) October 20, 2021