Cryptocurrency markets were buoyed by a fresh wave of bullishness Monday, as bitcoin rose for a sixth straight day to a three and a half-month high of over $50,000 and ether (ETH), the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, pushed past a key psychological level of $4,000.
Bitcoin climbed to as high as $51,000 on Monday, a 3.06% rise and was changing hands at around $51,689.55 at around 12.00 P.M East African Time, the highest price since May, after reaching an all-time high of $65,000 around April.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, appeared to get fresh impetus from a report Friday showing lacklustre U.S. jobs growth during August. The report fueled speculation that soft economic data might prompt the Federal Reserve to maintain its program of buying $120 billion a month in bonds longer than previously expected.
Ether Follows Bitcoin Trend
Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, followed the BTC trend and rose 1.01% on Monday, pushing past $4,000 for the first time since May. The digital currency climbed as high as $4,025 before slipping back to $3,957.99 as of press time.
The resurgence in non-fungible token (NFT) activity and interest in yield-generating decentralized finance (Defi) tokens have also contributed to ETH’s price rally.
Ether has vastly outperformed BTC this year, rising fivefold in price and pushing its market capitalization to about $465 billion. That’s close to half of bitcoin’s market cap of $950 billion.
“Many institutions that have had interest in bitcoin have moved on to ether as the next hot thing, and the second largest market cap asset. Additionally, most institutional players understand that many of these NFTs are being built on Ethereum, and it is an indirect way to get exposure to the fastest-growing segment of the market.” Jesse Proudman, co-founder and CEO of Robo-advisor Makara.
