The cryptocurrency markets experienced significant volatility this past week. Bitcoin prices plunged to a 10-day low around $64,500 amid concerns the U.S. government would offload 2,000 BTC seized from the infamous Silk Road darknet market. However, BTC then rallied nearly $5,000 in a single day to top $69,000 before pulling back again to the $66,000 level. As of now, Bitcoin is trading around $68,000 with a $1.34 trillion market cap and making up over 50% of the total crypto market.
While most major altcoins like Ethereum, BNB, Solana, XRP, Cardano, Shiba Inu, and Polkadot dipped earlier this week, they have since rebounded with minor 1-2% gains over the past day. Some alts saw more impressive recoveries, such as Toncoin up 4% to $5.5, Avalanche rising 2% to $47, and Dogecoin spiking 5% back above $0.18. Other notable gainers from the larger-cap altcoins included NEAR and Stacks with 5-6% increases.
The overall crypto market cap increased by around $30 billion since the previous day to reach $2.665 trillion. Smaller projects like Nervos Network surged 33% to crack the top 100, while Pendle and Ethena continued their uptrends with 25% gains. An emerging BRC-20 meme coin called PUPS made waves by skyrocketing from $6 to over $30 at one point.
While most altcoins rebounded, there were still some laggards like Maker and WIF posting minor losses. But the overall market appeared to bounce back thanks to Bitcoin’s recovery from its earlier 10-day low.
In other crypto news, a U.S. jury found Do Kwon and his company Terraform Labs liable for defrauding investors related to the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin last year. Meanwhile, one crypto analyst predicted Bitcoin mining profitability may not necessarily fall after the upcoming halving in 2024 due to increasing network fees from projects like Ordinals and DeFi built on Bitcoin.
