A bearish week for bitcoin has staged a surprise turnaround heading into Friday’s session.
While It looked like it was set for a bad day after yesterday’s dip to US$18,500, we’ve ultimately seen an impressive 24-hour rally up to US$19,700 to finish the week relatively even.
Bitcoin enjoys a pump, yet stays below key US$20,000 point – Source: currency.com
Ethereum has also jumped over 3% today, bringing the coin back above the critical US$1,300 price barrier.
Week on week, ether is still down around 2.5%, though it could have been worse if not for Friday’s bullish momentum.
The rally coincided with a hot CPI reading in the US which seemed to spur a drive to risk-on assets.
The risk-on environment was particularly welcoming in the altcoin space, with strong gains encountered across most large caps.
Ripple (XRP) and Polygon (MATIC) jumped over 9%, while Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) and Polkadot (DOT) gained around 6% a piece.
Even the Shiba Inu (SHIB) meme coin got in on the action with an 8% climb, bringing its market capitalisation up to US$5.7bn.
Klaytn (KLAY) was the only network token to suffer losses, having dipped 1.1% to US$466mln.
Some of the top movers this morning were in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space.
Decentralised exchanged Uniswap, Synthetix and Curve all enjoyed double-digit gains to their respective markets caps, while Lido DAO rallied over 15%.
Convex Finance was the only DeFi protocol to suffer losses, having shed 2.5% from its US$380mln market cap.
Total value locked across all DeFi protocols is currently US$53.8bn.
Bitcoin trading volumes shoot up
In addition to strong price action, bitcoin’s exchange trading volumes have also shot up.
Volumes have been particularly low recently, concurrent with low volatility readings, a concerning mix for some analysts.
“Low volatility in Bitcoin might not necessarily be a good thing, especially if it’s on low volume,” ARK Investment Management analyst Yassine Elmandjra said on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.
Coinbase is by far the most popular exchange for bitcoin traders – Source: data.bitcoinity.org
The theory goes that investors who are generally attracted to bitcoin’s volatile, dynamic environment are put off when the coin proves too boring to trade with.