Crypto markets continue their upward march as the rally extends to alt and meme coins

Hola folks!

Happy Monday! Hope you guys had a great weekend amid the broader crypto market rally led by Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin is around 40 days away from its halving event which is expected to lead to a reduction in the supply of Bitcoin, while the increased acceptance of the spot Bitcoin ETF as an asset class in the US is driving a buying frenzy. 

The increased demand for Bitcoin and an expected decrease in supply post-halving might bring in interesting price movements in Bitcoin in the coming months. And since the broader crypto market follows Bitcoin closely, the next couple of months for cryptos as a whole could be interesting. 

Read the newsletter to know what is in store for Bitcoin in the coming months, how the broader crypto market moved in the past week, the tokens that saw interesting price action, and why the markets moved. As always, end today’s read with a light, informative crypto crossword.

Bitcoin has been the talk of the town since the spot ETF approval in the US in January. Bitcoin has gained significantly since January and it continues to gain as the ETFs gain popularity in the US. 

Click on the video below to learn more about the reasons behind the ongoing Bitcoin surge. The video features CoinSwitch’s in-house crypto expert explaining why Bitcoin is surging.

Crypto markets continue to surge even after a very volatile week. The overall market capitalization has ballooned over $2.8trn, with all-time highs of the crypto market cap now in sight at just above $3trn. 

Bitcoin continued to post healthy gains even amongst heightened volatility, as it breached its all-time high of $69k. However, there was a sharp correction at those levels and prices dropped below $60k during the week as well. Overall, the continuous spot ETF purchases have provided a strong comeback to BTC prices, now settling above their new all-time High price above the $71k level. 

The week witnessed heavy trading volume in spot BTC ETFs, with a couple of days of more than $500 million in inflows. Blackrock and Fidelity are leaders in the race, with BTC holdings now over $12bn and $7.5bn respectively. Overall the new ETFs, including GBTC have amassed over $50bn in BTC AUM.

BTC's surge aside, the broader market finally witnessed a breakout week, with Altcoins and Memecoins pumping hard in terms of prices. Leading the charge was ETH, up by almost 15% last week and trading just above the $4k level, with all-time Highs, very much in sight now. 

The focus will continue shifting towards ETH, as the upcoming DenCun Upgrade is happening this week and will bring a lot of efficiency to its rollup-centric roadmap. Other Layer 1 tokens or ETH competitors had a great week as well with tokens from SOL, BNB, and NEAR surging in prices. The Dencun upgrade will also have a positive impact on Layer 2's of Ethereum and OP, ARB and MATIC have also been witnessing a price rise!

For the broader crypto markets, it was a sea of green as most tokens moved much higher in price. However the most remarkable price action was due to surging meme coin interest, rocketing prices for PEPE, SHIB, BONK, FLOKI, and DOGE. There was definite exuberance in the market which can be tracked by the interest pouring into these meme coins, which have pumped by over 100% during the week, but a word of caution would be on their highly volatile upward march. 

Riding on the AI theme, amidst Nvidia's upcoming event this week, Render and Fetch.ai continued to surge in prices, jumping over 50% during the week. 

Another token that needs to be highlighted in Fantom's FTM which saw a resurgence of interest as whales started accumulating the token along with roadmap reveals for upcoming launches/upgrades.

• BTC $71,516.58 ⏫ 9.45%

• ETH $4,010 ⏫ 13.65% 

• FLOKI $0.0002842 ⏫ 77.25%

• RNDR $12.40 ⏫ 63.52% 

(All data here is as of 3.20 p.m., 11 March 2024)

Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at some important news from around the crypto world.

• After crossing $70,000 for the first time last week, the world’s largest crypto hit a fresh high of $70,400 during Asian trading hours on March 11. The leading crypto has been steadily rising since the approval of the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US in early January. Read more here. 

• The Ethereum blockchain’s Dencun upgrade, scheduled for March 13, is the first step toward enabling its rollup-centric roadmap and will allow the network to function as a proper database for layer-2 blockchains to store data more efficiently and cheaply, Fidelity Digital Assets said in a research report on March 6. Read more here. 

Before you get on with your day, don’t forget to flex those brain muscles with our weekly crypto crossword.

That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.

See you later, folks! 👋

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