Bitcoin Sees Best Day in a Month, While Ether Rises More

In Brief

• Bitcoin rallied above $22,500 on Monday, hitting its highest price in more than a month.
• Other cryptocurrencies also rallied,with Ether closing nearly 9% higher due to the upcoming Merge.
• The crypto market is banking on hope that the contagion and shakeout over the past few weeks is coming to an end.

Bitcoin Has Best Day in over a Month, Ether Outperforms It

Bitcoin (BTC) surged above $22,500 early Monday, hitting its highest level in over a month. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has not traded above $22,000 since June 16, 2022.

BTC traded as low as $18,800 last week and has made significant gains since, trading up 11% over the last seven days.

But the big story of the day in crypto markets was ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency, which is picking up momentum in advance of a big upgrade now expected in September.

Ether has accelerated its rally Monday morning, outperforming bitcoin, perhaps an indication that the market is starting to take the network’s upcoming “Merge” seriously.

ETH was trading up 10% over the last 24-hours at $1,477. On Friday, a member of the Ethereum community tweeted an outline of dates for the long-awaited Merge and prior events. Moving closer to the transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, The Merge is set to take place on Sept. 19, 2022.

“The upcoming Merge is definitely a case for the hype in ETH,” said Laurent Kssis, head of Europe at crypto asset manager Hashdex. Kssis noted that short ETH liquidations were triggering buy orders which also accelerated the positive price movement.

Altcoin Roundup

Over the last seven days there has been a general catch up for altcoins. Most major altcoins outperformed bitcoin, with Polygon’s MATIC up 62%, AVAX by 37% and NEAR by 24%.

Polygon’s MATIC token leading the charts, up 18.4% over the past 24 hours. MATIC surged over 66% over seven days after Disney chose the Ethereum scaling tool as part of its 2022 Accelerator Program.

Oanda Senior Market Analyst Edward Moya said that crypto sentiment is improving on signs that the global economy will remain solid in the near future and that the U.S. central bank will raise interest rates at its next meeting by 0.75 percentage point instead of 1 percentage point as some monetary policy observers had predicted last week.

“If bitcoin continues to stabilize here over the next two weeks, the crypto winter could be over,” said Moya.

Read More:

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