BTC, ETH Tap Near-Yearly Highs as Market Cap Eyes $1.3T (Market Watch)

Bitcoin initiated another leg up in the past 24 hours, resulting in tapping $31,000 for the first time since early June 2022.

ETH has also been on a roll since the Shapella upgrade, and the asset charted an 11-month high at over $2,100 earlier today.

Bitcoin Touched $21K

The start of the week was quite uneventful for bitcoin, which had continued its weekend stagnation and stood primarily around $28,000. However, as Monday was coming to its end, so did BTC’s lack of movement.

The cryptocurrency skyrocketed first to $29,000 and then to and beyond $30,000 for the first time in ten months. Then came the CPI numbers for March, which were lower than the previous two months. This sent BTC north once more by $500.

Nevertheless, the asset lost all gains hours later and returned to around $30,000. The bulls stepped on the gas in the past 24 hours, pushing the cryptocurrency north once more. This time, bitcoin skyrocketed to over $31,000, marking yet another ten-month peak.

Its market capitalization has neared $600 billion, but its dominance over the altcoins has taken a beating, mostly due to ETH’s gains, and has declined to 46.4%.

ETH at $2.1K

Aside from the CPI numbers, the crypto community’s focus on Wednesday was on the long-anticipated Shapella upgrade. Despite some speculations that it could send ETH south due to the large amounts of unlocked tokens, the asset has actually gone on a tear since its completion. ETH is up by over $200 in two days and registered an 11-month high earlier today above $2,100.

Dogecoin and Cardano are the other two massive gainers from the larger-cap alts. DOGE is up by 7%, leading to speculations that it could tap $0.1 following Musk’s actions on Twitter. ADA’s daily increase is similar, and it has exceeded $0.4.

More gains come from the likes of Uniswap, Chainlink, ATOM, APT, LDO, and ARB – which has exploded by over 20%.

Overall, the crypto market cap has added just over $40 billion in a day and sits close to $1.3 trillion on CMC.