The crypto markets may have sat still on Thanksgiving, but early price action on Friday is driving some of the top coins to levels unseen in a year and a half.
Bitcoin on Friday rocketed above the $38,000 mark, according to CoinGecko, rising to $38,390 at present. The last time BTC hit that level was back in May 2022. Over the past week, the asset has risen by nearly 7%, pushing its 30-day gains above 10%.
Cash has flooded back into the crypto markets, with big digital asset funds receiving most of the money as investors feel confident that a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) will finally approved by U.S. regulators after 10 years.
Such a product would give traditional investors exposure to the crypto world in a safe and regulated way. In a Monday report, digital asset fund manager CoinShares said that crypto products received inflows of $176 million last week—the eighth consecutive week of inflows.
Meanwhile, EthereumEthereum also spiked to an 18-month high, per data from CoinGecko, reaching a peak of nearly $2,131 early Friday. It's currently trading at $2,121, and is up about 4% on the day.
The asset is up 17% over the past 30 days, and continues trending upward. Ethereum had been trading above $2,500 some 18 months ago in May 2022, before the markets got hit hard by the collapse of crypto mega project Terra.
Bitcoin Sender Overpays Record-Breaking $3 Million Transaction Fee
A luckless Bitcoin sender seemingly made a costly mistake, paying a record-breaking $3 million in transaction fees for a single transaction. Blockchain data shows that the Bitcoin sender intended to send 139.42 BTC (worth around $5.1 million), of which 83.64 BTC was gobbled up in transaction fees, leaving the recipient with just 55.77 BTC (around $2 million at today’s prices). The transaction fee is the largest such payment in the history of Bitcoin. It’s likely that today’s payment was made by...
Elsewhere, meme coin king Dogecoin is up over 3% in the past day, trading for $0.078. Its rival, Shiba Inu, put up a nearly 3% gain as well at a current price of $0.00000828.
Solana, which experienced a lot of price action this month, was one of the sleepiest of the major coins and tokens, having only jumped by 2% over the past day to a current price above $58. Over the past week, Solana has risen by 3%.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
