After a rocky week, most cryptocurrencies traded higher on Friday. On March 18, Bitcoin (BTC) rose sharply, confirming predictions that higher levels might see a retest. Ethereum (ETH) was the star performer, gaining as much as 5% in the last 24 hours and breaking beyond $3,000 for the first time in two weeks.
In the meantime, Bitcoin (BTC) rose to intraday highs of $42,362 and was up 3% during the same period.
Bitcoin was trading at $41,883 at the time of writing, while Ethereum was trading at $2955.
Sean Farrell, vice president of FundStrat’s digital asset strategy, feels that greater price swings are still possible in the near term. Despite the risk-on-week for crypto assets, he believes there will be more volatility in the near term, but that any dips in ETH and BTC could be buying opportunities.
Billionaire investor and Doubleline Capital CEO Jeffery Gundlach says he would prefer to buy Bitcoin over gold in the short term as the lead asset trades near the low end of its range.
According to IntotheBlock analytics firm, Ethereum had the largest outflows in 2022, with over 180,000 ETH removed from centralized exchanges in a single day. In addition, 190,000 ETH was deposited in Lido’s stETH liquid staking account. The chain analytics firm points out that the last time such a large amount of ETH left exchanges was in October 2021, only ten days before a 15 percent price.
On March 17, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), announced the launch of ApeCoin (APE), a new cryptocurrency token that has sparked significant interest in the cryptocurrency market. APE’s price skyrocketed to nearly $40 shortly after its release, before dropping to around $8.50 a short time later.
According to CoinMarketCap statistics, ApeCoin is currently trading at $14.42, up 79.66 percent in the last 24 hours after reaching a high of $17.75 earlier in the day. Since its launch, ApeCoin has increased by approximately 1400 percent due to significant interest in the token.
As a result of its meteoric rise, APE has climbed into the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market valuation, ranked 34th largest. Bored Ape NFTs are in high demand, with each one fetching several hundred thousand dollars leading to a spark off in interest in ApeCoin. With an average of 59,000 monthly Google searches, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection was in the top 10 NFT collections earlier this month.
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