Market Watch: Bitcoin Tapped Monthly High, Ripple Jumps 5%

Bitcoin continues to add value gradually and charted a new monthly high hours ago at just over $17,500.

Most altcoins are also slightly in the green today, led by Ripple’s 4% increase.

Bitcoin Touched $17.5K

The start of the year has been quite favorable for the primary cryptocurrency as it traded around $16,500 on January 1 but neared $17,000 by the end of the first week. Although the bears stopped the asset at its first encounter with that line during the weekend, it finally gave in on Monday morning.

In contrast to some warnings, BTC hasn’t looked back yet since reclaiming $17,000. Just the opposite, it traded a few hundred dollars above it in the next few days before it shot up even higher in the past 24 hours.

This resulted in a price increase to just north of $17,500 for the first time since December 16. Despite retracing slightly since then, its market capitalization is above $335 billion.

Its dominance over the altcoins is up to 39.2%. This means it’s up by 0.2% since then but down by almost 1% in the past week or so.

XRP Adds 5%

As hinted above, the alternative coins have been even more impressive since the start of the year, evident from the shrinking BTC dominance. Solana and Cardano were at the forefront of that offensive, both jumping to multi-month highs.

Most of the alts are now calmer, with minor daily increases. Ethereum is above $1,300, even though there’re some suggestions that ETH could drop soon ahead of the Shanghai update.

Binance Coin, Dogecoin, Polygon, OKB, and Litecoin have increased by up to 2% in a day. Ripple has added the most value in the past 24 hours. XRP has jumped by about 5% and sits close to $0.37.

Lido DAO’s LDO has retraced hard following its recent run and is down by 8% on a daily scale.

Overall, however, the crypto market cap is still well above $850 billion.

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