In brief
- Bitcoin is up about 5% over the past 24 hours, topping the $41,000 mark twice during that span.
- Ethereum has added nearly 6%, meanwhile, as the wider market starts to recover.
Last week was pretty much flat for the wider cryptocurrency market, but the top coins are beginning to mount a recovery today, with Bitcoin and Ethereum posting notable gains.
Bitcoin topped the $41,000 mark twice over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko, and currently sits at a price of $40,791—a nearly 5% increase over the past 24 hours. It’s the first time in nearly a week that Bitcoin has risen above $41,000.
Granted, the leading cryptocurrency is still down significantly over the last three months. It was sitting above $50,000 in late December, but the wider crypto market has suffered in the span since, with Bitcoin itself dropping as low as about $33,500 in January.
On Tuesday, prior to the latest price action, OANDA Senior Market Analyst Edward Moya wrote that Bitcoin “remains trapped in a tight range despite improving sentiment for risk,” reflecting the lack of significant movement in recent days. Since then, however, Bitcoin is showing some upward movement. Moya pegged Bitcoin’s current ceiling at $45,000.
Noted on-chain Bitcoin analyst Willy Woo tweeted today that the coin was demonstrating “little green shoots forming after a winter.”
Ethereum is up nearly 6% over the last day, meanwhile, at a current price of $2,706. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap and leading smart contract platform is now at its highest price in about a week, but hasn’t touched the $3,000 mark since March 2.
Rival smart contract platform Solana is showing a 5% gain over the past 24 hours, as of this writing, at a current price above $84, while Polkadot is up nearly 6% to $18. According to CoinGecko, the overall market is up about 4% over the past 24 hours.
Not every crypto coin in the top 10 by market cap has seen such sizable gains today, however: XRP is up less than 2% at a current price of $0.77, for example, while Binance Coin and Cardano are each up about 3% as of this writing.
Looking at the wider top 100 coins, The Sandbox’s SAND token is one of the biggest winners today, climbing some 11% overnight. The Ethereum-based metaverse game just announced partnerships with celebrity Paris Hilton and Europe’s second-largest bank, HSBC.
Fantom’s FTM token also gained about 11% over the past 24 hours after a turbulent couple weeks for the DeFi-centric ecosystem. Developer Andre Cronje said on March 6 that he was quitting the DeFi space (again), which sent tokens from his projects—chiefly FYM and Yearn Finance’s YFI—plummeting.
FTM is still down nearly 10% over the past seven days, but jumped over the last day, possibly in part due to being listed on the eToro trading platform for the first time.
The best of Decrypt straight to your inbox.
Get the top stories curated daily, weekly roundups & deep dives straight to your inbox.