Cryptocurrency markets are having a very good week. Of the top 50 tokens by market cap according to data provider Nomics, none have lost ground.
That streak—which took a day off yesterday as markets fell—got going again today, led by Cardano (up 13%), XRP (6%), and Ethereum (5%). The result was a 6.7% increase, roughly $95 billion, to the crypto market cap in 24 hours.
If you're looking for reasons, you don't have to search hard to find them.
Cardano, an Ethereum competitor, teased the rollout of smart contracts to its platform earlier this week. The contracts, set to come with the Alonzo network upgrade in about a month, will allow decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on the network for the first time. DeFi replaces financial intermediaries such as banks and brokers with automated code in the form of smart contracts, enabling everything from loans and interest to asset swaps and derivatives trading. Cardano's ADA coin has now crested the $2.00 mark to hit a three-month high.
Ethereum, meanwhile, is still riding high from its own network upgrade last week, which brought with it a code change called EIP-1559. That modified the network's transaction fee structure, charging a transaction fee and then destroying it. By taking money out of circulation—over 38,000 ETH ($123 million) has already been "burned"—it created deflationary pressure on the asset. Less supply, more demand. ETH has now stayed above $3,000 for a week, the first time it has done so since May.
For its part, Ripple continues to rack up small victories in its $1.3 billion battle with the SEC over an alleged unregistered securities offering of XRP, giving some clients enough confidence to partner with it. On Wednesday, for example, large South Korean firm GME Remittance announced it had joined the RippleNet payment network. XRP is now back above $1 for the first time since early June.
Things are going swimmingly elsewhere, too, with Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Polkadot and Uniswap all showing solid gains.