Bitcoin climbs past $30k, Ethereum approaches $2k
The crypto market recorded major gains as Bitcoin briefly reached levels last seen in June 2022 while ETH price reached an 8-month high.
Bitcoin (BTC) soared past the $30,000 mark on April 11 — reaching its highest point since June 2022.
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $30,073 while its market cap reached $581.7 billion, according to CryptoSlate data. Bitcoin is up 6% over the past 24 hours and 7.41% over the past week.
Bitcoin’s rally buoyed the entire cryptocurrency market — the global crypto market cap is up more than 4% to $1.24 trillion over the past 24 hours. The total crypto market trading volume reached $47.26 billion.
Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency, bagged 3.1% gains over the past day to trade at $1,917 at the time of publishing. The market cap of ETH stood at $230.9 billion. Ethereum last neared the $2,000 mark in August 2022.
The gains came ahead of the Shanghai upgrade scheduled for April 12 — when 18 million staked ETH worth around $34 billion will be unlocked. The unlocking is expected to create selling pressure on ETH and negatively impact the price of ETH.
With the gains of the past day, Bitcoin and Ethereum are up over 81% and 60% year-to-date, respectively.
Solana (SOL) recorded the highest gains over the past day, rising 9.66% over the past day to $22.22 at the time of writing. BNB (BNB), Cardano (ADA), and XRP (XRP) prices climbed by 4% or more over the past 24 hours. BNB rose 4.66% to $327.49 while XRP price increased 4% to $0.52. Cardano price is up 4.32% to $0.40 at the time of writing.
Dogecoin (DOGE) and Polygon (MATIC) saw minor gains of 1.65% and 2.66% respectively over the past day.
The rise in crypto prices comes at a time when investors are awaiting key inflation data due to be released later this week. Traders are hoping to see a pause in Fed interest rate hikes, which could further boost crypto prices.