The cryptocurrency market saw an influx of activity on March 8 that provided a lift to the vast majority of the top tokens as the world celebrates International Women’s Day.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) recovery back above $50,000 was followed by a new wave of bullish optimism and analysis from Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone suggested that Bitcoin is pushing gold aside as a store of value in investors’ portfolios.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows the price of BTC has increased 4.6% from a low of $49,272 during the early trading hours of March 8 to $53,300 at the time of writing.
BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Recent analysis shows that while professional traders remain hesitant to open new BTC long positions due to a strengthening dollar index and rising Treasury yields, large corporations are buying BTC at an accelerated rate leading to heavy outflows from exchanges. Now that Bitcoin price has secured a daily close above the $52,000 level, its possible that these reluctant traders will open new long positions.
Bitcoin balance at all exchanges. Source: glassnode
On-chain data from glassnode also points to a bullish case for Bitcoin as miners have stopped selling BTC for the most part and now appear to be in accumulation mode.
NFT capabilities help boost token prices
Altcoins also moved significantly higher as many top projects reached new all-time highs on Monday. Non-fungible tokens (NFT) projects like Ultra (UOS), Theta (THETA) and Enjin (ENJ) all managed double-digit gains and reached new yearly highs during today’s trading session.
THETA/USDT vs. UOS/USDT vs. ENJ/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
UOS price surged 21% to establish a record high of $0.452 as the excitement grows around the project’s mainnet launch which will enable cross-chain and NFT capabilities.
Theta, a blockchain-based video streaming platform, also reached a new all-time high of $4.98 in front of the long-awaited hard fork on March 10.
Theta performed strongly throughout February as the project was bolstered by the introduction of NFTs for streamers and an announced partnership that saw Sony Europe join the Theta blockchain validator program.
Enjin (ENJ) also broke out to a new all-time high of $1.76 on March 5 as the project’s focus on creating a wide-ranging NFT ecosystem is beginning to pay off.
Market-wide rally lifts the total market cap
Recent developments for Ethereum (ETH) helped stoke an 8% rally in Ether as the community prepares to roll out the Berlin upgrade on April 14.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Chainlink (LINK) is the best performing in the top 10, up 12% to a price of $31, while Dogecoin (DOGE) is up 15.73% and trading at $0.58.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.65 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 60.4%.
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