Altcoins Rise While Bitcoin's Price Holds Steady

After Bitcoin stops pumping, the market moves into altcoins.

By Ekin Genç

After a week of all-time-highs, Bitcoin’s momentum has tapered off at around $47,000. Meanwhile, altcoins continue to rise.

Bitcoin’s price today hit $47,093, down 0.41% from yesterday’s $47,286 and up 18.59% from last week’s $38,338. Its price has jumped earlier this week to an all-time high of $48,000 after Tesla announced its $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin, followed by a series of confidence-boosting developments. Most notably, America’s oldest bank, BNY Mellon, announced that it will support Bitcoin.

Altcoins on the rise

The price of Ethereum, the largest alternative crypto to Bitcoin, today hit $1,810, a jump by 2.94% from yesterday’s $1,756. Ethereum’s weekly price change is an increase of 6.50%.

In the 24 hours, Cardano (ADA) fell 2.14% to $0.9, XRP fell 0.64% to $0.58, Polkadot (DOT) increased 12.18% to $28.50.

But these daily performances do not reflect the overall weekly performance of the altcoin market; all top altcoins jumped considerably over the past week: ADA by 63%, XRP by 34%, and DOT by 39%.

Others in the top ten also performed swimmingly. Binance Coin (BNB) increased by 0.60% in the past 24 hours, but 70% in the past week to $127.10, making it this week’s best performer by percentage increase. 

Stellar (XLM) increased by 14.21% in the past 24 hours and 54.70% in the past week. Its current price is $0.52.

Meanwhile, Litecoin (LTC) increased by 5.20% in the past day and 22.76% in the past week to $195, while Chainlink (LINK) surged 6.37% in the past day and 16.67% in the past week to $29.55.

Dogecoin growth slows down

Dogecoin (DOGE), the 12th largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $8.8 billion, dropped by 0.49% in the past 24 hours and jumped 40.15% in the past week to its current price of $0.06. Dogecoin surged after concentrated efforts from its investors pumped up the price. Celebrity interest helped spread its word, most notably one-time “Dogecoin CEO” and recent Bitcoin bull, Elon Musk.

Chinese New Year, a sixteen-day holiday period that started yesterday, is normally a time when the cryptocurrency market experiences price drops as Chinese investors dump their coins. However, as analysts told Decrypt last week, that hasn’t happened this year. Western institutional investors now dominate the cryptocurrency market, they explained.