As Bitcoin and Ethereum stage a comeback, the market capitalization of the entire crypto market crawled back above $2 trillion today for the first time since May 19, according to data from CoinGecko.
Bitcoin is up by more than 20% in the last week and is currently changing hands at around $46,500. The benchmark cryptocurrency is still the market’s undisputed leader, responsible for as much as 43.7% of its entire value.
But it’s not just Bitcoin behind the market’s resurgence. Ethereum, which went through its scheduled London hard fork last week, is currently outperforming BTC, having recorded a 28.4% rise over the past seven days. At the moment, ETH is trading at a near three-month high of $3,270.
Other major altcoins contributed to the market’s growth, with the likes of BNB, XRP, Polkadot, Solana, and Litecoin all rising by more than 20% over the week.
Cardano (ADA), the fifth-largest cryptocurrency in the market, is another notable contributor to the overall surge. The project is led by Charles Hoskinson, one of Ethereum’s original co-founders, and it is currently awaiting the arrival of its long-anticipated smart contracts functionality.
Smart contracts are essentially just lines of computer code that allow a blockchain's native currency to become "programmable." This is what has enabled the growth of the multi-billion-dollar DeFi market on Ethereum, which entails lending, borrowing, and trading crypto assets without intermediaries such as banks.
Caradno's native coin, ADA, has seen a 20.5% rise in price over the last 24 hours, and a larger 37% increase over the last week.
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