After dabbling around $16K – $17K for a few days, Bitcoin has soared back above $18K. Most alternative coins have also increased in value, adding $30 billion to the total market cap in a day.
Following the vigorous price dips from earlier this week that resulted in BTC losing more than $3,000 in hours, the asset consolidated around $17,000 for a few days.
Bitcoin charted a few more drops beneath that level. However, the situation changed over the weekend. The primary cryptocurrency went on a tear, broke above $17,000, and hasn’t looked back since then. A few minutes ago, it even jumped above $18K.
Interestingly, the substantial 16% price drop earlier this week didn’t affect the Bitcoin social media sentiment. According to the cryptocurrency analytics company Santiment, the positive commentaries have remained optimistic despite the price developments.
“This is only the 4th time since 2017 that BTC sentiment has stayed this positive,” the company added.
The alternative coins performed even worse than BTC during the Thanksgiving price slumps. Ethereum nosedived from its yearly high of $620 to $485. Ripple went as high as $0.80 before tanking to $0.46.
However, both these assets, and most other altcoins, saw a nice recovery over the weekend. On a 24-hour scale, ETH has gained another 6% and trades around $550. XRP is back to double-digit increases (13%) and sits above $0.60.
Bitcoin Cash (4.5%), Litecoin (7%), Polkadot (4%), and Chainlink (4%) are also in the green from the top ten. However, Cardano has trumped them all with a 15% surge. As a result, ADA has taken the 7th spot in terms of market capitalization, according to CoinGecko.
As could be expected, lower- and mid-cap saw even sharper increases. Horizen leads with a 25% price surge. Zilliqa (23%), Dash (18%), Nexo (18%), Numeraire (15%), IOTA (13%), Orchid (11%), Qtum (11%), and Ocean Protocol (10%) follow.
Overall, the total crypto market cap has increased to $535 billion. This is a $30 billion increase since yesterday and $50 billion since the Thanksgiving drops.
