The Latest Crypto Market Rally Pushes Bitcoin (BTC) Above $13,000 & Ethereum (ETH) Above $400

Over the last three days, cryptocurrency market has made a strong move northwards with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) leading the chart.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) hit a major milestone by crossing $13,000 levels and clocking its new 2020-high. The 7-day chart on WorldCoinIndex shows that Bitcoin has appreciated by 15% over the last week.

At press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at a price of $12,934 with a market cap of $239 billion. This is for the first time in the last 16 months that Bitcoin price has moved past $13,000 levels.

Bitcoin’s latest price rise comes on the backdrop of the news that payments giant PayPal will soon launch its crypto trading service to its 326 million customers worldwide. In fact, the BTC price surge started even before the PayPal news arrived in the market.

Just a day before the PayPal announcement, BTC had already made a move above $12,000. However, the PayPal news added more fuel to make Bitcoin rally past $13,000. At the same time, Bitcoin remains as the top choice for the institutional players who have been increasing their Bitcoin exposure over the last few months.

With all the news around global economic uncertainty and inflation rise, investors are moving towards Bitcoin as a potential hedge or an alternative asset class. Over the last few months, there’s been a massive institutional money rain in Bitcoin worth millions of dollars. Big financial institutions and asset managers are showing their allegiance to the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

On the other hand, Bitcoin competitor Ethereum (ETH) is also showing strong surge on the weekly charts. Over the last week, ETH price has surged nearly 10% crossing the $400 milestone. At press time, Ethereum (ETH) is trading at a price of $413 with a market cap of $46 billion.

It means that Ethereum along contributes 13% share in the overall cryptocurrency market. Ethereum has been in the news throughout 2020 especially of the rally in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) market as the world’s second-largest blockchain is home to some of the largest DeFi tokens.

With the massive DeFi activity, the Ethereum blockchain is on the verge of becoming the first blockchain network to process nearly $1 trillion in transactions in a span of one year. The DeFi mania has also helped Ethereum to surpass Bitcoin for becoming the top choice for payment and on-chain transactions.

Decetralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap have also contributed for the surge in the trading volumes on the platform.