Ethereum (ETH) surged to an 11-month high this morning in what looks set to be an exceptionally strong rally for the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, much to the surprise of anyone expecting a drop following the Shanghai upgrade.
ETH has a history of acting bearishly after major network upgrades; that’s what happened last September when the long-delayed merger finally took place.
In addition, fears of large-scale selling pressure, as the Shanghai upgrade allowed potentially USD 33 billion worth of ETH to be sold on the open market, appeared to weaken the spot price.
That certainly hasn’t happened, at least in the short term, with ETH/USDT adding 5% on Thursday and another 5.3% this morning to push the pair as high as US$2,130.
Ether on a tear – Source: currency.com
Short liquidations in the futures market clocked in at a whopping $93 million over the past 24 hours as a result.
Bulls will see a move above US$2,200 where the biggest selling wall is located, according to Binance’s order book.
Bitcoin, while not as strong as Ether in the short term, remains in a good position after flirting with 31k in this morning’s Asia trading window, marking nine-month highs on the BTC/USDT pair.
Bitcoin Hits Nine-Month Highs – Source: currency.com
There was some uncertainty among bitcoin traders following the mixed US inflation reading on Tuesday, with risk-asset investors weighing up whether the slightly better-than-expected year-on-year drop to 5% was enough to support a risk – rally.
For now, bitcoin appears to be in a bullish phase, although ETH is undoubtedly stronger, with the ETH/BTC pair adding 9.5% over the past three days.
DOGE wags his tail
Recent news about Twitter’s partnership with eToro to bring crypto and stock trading to the bird has caused another spike in Dogecoin (DOGE) memecoin.
The feature will provide Twitter users searching for ‘$Cashtags’ such as $TSLA or $BTC with real-time prices for cryptocurrencies, stocks and other assets, and direct them to the eToro platform to invest in them.
Musk is a longtime Dogecoin stalwart, so naturally the DOGE Army is speculating about further integration between memecoin and Twitter.
DOGE is somewhat of a proxy for Twitter these days, so the eToro news sent DOGE/USDT around 9% higher week-over-week.
Solana is warming up
But the strongest week-to-week performer among the altcoin blue chips is clearly SOL, the original coin of the Solana blockchain network.
SOL is currently up around 24% on the week, with a market cap approaching $10 billion, buoyed by the pending launch of the Solana-powered, crypto-forward smartphone “Saga”.
The Android-based Solana Mobile will cost $1,000 and is built in collaboration with OSOM. Pre-orders are now being taken.
Other top movers in the altcoin space include Cardano (ADA), adding 16% week-over-week, newly launched Ethereum scaling solution Arbitrum (ARB), adding over 27%, and Optimism (OP), another Ethereum scaling solution, adding to 17%.
Global crypto market capitalization increased by 4.5% to $1.29 billion overnight, while the total value of the decentralized finance space increased by 5% to $53.8 billion.
