The crypto markets saw a strong boost today, coinciding with a softening of the US dollar.
Bitcoin sailed comfortably past US$20,000 for the first time in three weeks, encouraged by a riskier investor appetite, S&P 500 momentum, and large-scale liquidations of short BTC positions.
Ethereum rallied some 11%, extending past the US$1,500 price point for the first time since mid-September and before The Merge.
Now at US$1,532, ether has cut back slightly, so speculation of a bull trap should not be ruled out.
Ether (ETH) spikes… But is it a bear trap? – Source: currency.com
The crypto markets as a whole are sitting at a monthly high of US$980.9bn.
All large-cap altcoins joined in on the action, particularly Cardano (ADA), which led the pack with a 12.5% rally to bring its market cap close to US$14bn.
Polkadot (DOT), Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX) all added nearly 10% each.
Dogecoin (DOGE) was also among the top daily movers, having added 10.3%, potentially due to the recent rally on Dogechain, the new blockchain developed with DOGE in mind.
But the day’s biggest winner so far is the Telegram-affiliated blockchain Toncoin (TON).
Toncoin spiked over 18%, bringing its valuation up to US$2.21bn.
All decentralised finance (DeFi) tokens are up, with Lido, Synthetic and Convext Finance all posting double-digital gains.
The US$5bn decentralised exchange Uniswap (UNI) rose over 8% while Curve added around 7.5%.