Bitcoin Retests $50,000 Milestone for Second Time in 10 Days

Bitcoin, the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency, is back above $50,000 on Thursday. Bitcoin reached this level on August 23, before pulling back.

BTC is up 5.5% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, peaking at the local high of $50,171. With a market cap of $941.6 billion, Bitcoin currently dominates 40.6% of the market.

While this can be considered a rather positive start to a new month, historically September has been a difficult month for Bitcoin bulls.

Data from bybt.com shows that investors have suffered losses in September for the past four years in a row, with maximum monthly returns slightly exceeding 6%.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, is up 5.8% over the day, having re-tested levels above $3,800. At press time, ETH is changing hands at $3,742.

Cardano rallies to a new record high

Meanwhile, Cardano (ADA), which climbed to the third spot last month, hit a new all-time high of $3.09 earlier today, as the network prepares for the Alonzo hard fork–an eagerly anticipated upgrade that will bring smart contract functionality.

Smart contracts are bits of code that self-execute commands and instructions under predetermined circumstances.

As revealed by IOHK, the company developing Cardano, smart contracts went live on the network’s testnet yesterday, with the mainnet rollout slated to occur on September 12.

Other top gainers of the day include VeChain, which is 9.2% up, ChainLink (+7.7%), Dogecoin (+7.1%), and Polkadot (5.3%).