The crypto market is on fire again, but this time, the fuel isn’t coming from “crypto bros” on social media. It’s coming from Wall Street, and it’s all based on a massive bet that the Federal Reserve is about to cut interest rates.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, is leading the charge, surging nearly 10% in the past 24 hours to $4,723.26, bringing its all-time high of $4,878.26 within sight. This rally is, according to some market observers, a calculated move by large, institutional investors who are flocking to risky assets in anticipation of a major shift in U.S. economic policy.
The Altcoin Surge
While Bitcoin has been taking a breather, altcoins (a catch-all term for any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin) are exploding. Ether (ETH), the native currency of the Ethereum blockchain, a platform for decentralized finance (DeFi) services that mimic traditional banking without middlemen, is up nearly 10% in the last day. Ether (ETH) is trading nearing its all-time high of $4,878.26 set in November 2021, according to data from CoinGecko.
Other major tokens like Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and Avalanche (AVAX) have all posted sharp gains of 10% to 16%.
Even memecoins like Dogecoin (DOGE) are riding the wave, jumping 12%.
This broad-based rally is a classic sign of an “altcoin season,” a period when confident investors move money from the relative safety of Bitcoin into riskier but higher-potential assets. This is reflected in Bitcoin’s market dominance, which has fallen to 57.4% of the total crypto market, a sign that investors are diversifying.
“We suspect that investors are selling the first cryptocurrency to finance purchases of altcoins,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro.
Why Wall Street Is Piling On
According to experts, this surge is being driven by institutional money, not retail speculation. “The current hot market is being driven predominantly by institutional adoption, led by aggressive buying from digital asset treasury companies,” Min Jung, a senior analyst at quantitative trading firm Presto, told Decrypt.
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