What a positive week for Bitcoin!

Have the crypto markets finally bottomed? Price action over the last two days seems to show a major shift in momentum among the top 100 cryptocurrencies, brought about by double-digit gains in Bitcoin and major technical breakouts for the likes of XRP, Ethereum, and even Bitcoin Cash.

Market breaks upwards

After barely holding above the $100 billion level on Saturday, the cryptocurrency market capitalisation has since gained a swift $26 billion, with the bulk of the rally occurring in the last 48 hours. The uptrend was kick-started by Bitcoin’s double-digit rally on the anniversary of its $20,000 bull run.

What a lovely way to celebrate!

At the time of writing, every crypto in the top 25 has reported gains over the course of the week. Bitcoin Cash has been by far the best performer, adding 33% to reach $121.03. BCH had experienced a brutal selloff in the wake of the November 15th hard fork, dragging prices to depths never before seen in the currency’s history. We even got a chance to see the flappening between BCH and LTC.

Bitcoin SV, which emerged from the hard fork as a major player in the cryptocurrency market, also traded in a positive direction on Wednesday. BSV shot up 16.1% to $91.50.

XRP rose 14% to $0.3823, setting the stage for an even bigger short-term rally. The same could be said about Tron, which gained 15.4%. TRX has gained some 30% over the past week and is currently eyeing resistance at a recent double-top formation.

Ethereum was back above $100 on Wednesday, with price climbing 10.4% to $105.51, while Stellar (XLM) rose 10.6% to $0.1215.

The rally was accompanied by a large upswing in daily trading volumes. Turnover on digital currency exchanges topped $21 billion, practically doubling the weekend trading levels.

Other altcoins

Waves (WAVES), Stratis (STRAT), and MonaCoin (MONA) all hit between 52% and 72% growth during the 24-hour period leading into Wednesday. Like many major and minor altcoins, growth was beyond the rate of the broader crypto market, which grew 24% in the same period.

Waves has been on the hype train for the last few weeks, releasing an all-in-one mobile wallet app and building anticipation for the much talked about Vostock ICO – which got underway recently.

Waves holders stand to share in 3% of the Vostock coin airdrop, and many investors may be trying to maximise their Vostock holdings by accumulating Waves.

The little known altcoin MonaCoin, which has been around since 2013, on Wednesday entered the market cap top 100 with a 72% growth surge. That took the MONA dollar price from $0.505580 up to $0.874494 – all within less than a day.

Last but not least, STRAT outperformed even Waves in the last 24 hours, gaining over 63% on its value since last night’s low of $0.753439. By Wednesday afternoon, the dollar value of STRAT had climbed to $1.23 – a new monthly high, and one which clears losses taken by Stratis in November.