decrypt.co
As Bitcoin stays above the $30,000 mark, a number of usually quiet altcoins are surging. In the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows that NFT marketplace and aggregator Blur's native BLUR token is up more than 11%.
Blur, which launched an airdrop in February, is the the largest recent rival to market leader OpenSea. In the past week, it is up 15%, trading for $0.39.
Other alts experiencing a surge include the new meme coin Pepe, which launched in April and is based on the Pepe the Frog internet meme. It's up modestly by nearly 2% in the past 24 hours, trading for $0.00000162.
But compared to the past week it's a winner—having surged by 74% in the past seven days.
Also up significantly is Flex Coin, the native token of crypto exchange CoinFLEX: it's up over 21% in 24 hours and 62% in the past seven days.
And Arbitrum, a layer-2 rollup on Ethereum, is also doing well in the past day, having jumped nearly 6% in 24 hours. The project in March launched its native governance token ARB.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was up 1.6% in the past 24 hours at the time of writing.
The world's largest and oldest cryptocurrency broke past $30,000 last week, then $31,000 for the first time in over a year. It since then it's mostly been able to stay above $30,000.
The surge in investment comes after the world's biggest asset manager BlackRock applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a spot Bitcoin ETF—something that the regulator is yet to approve. Investors think the Wall Street giant has a better chance than anybody to get the approval stamp on the product.
Bitcoin's rally is also in part driven by the launch of a new digital asset exchange, EDX Markets, which is backed by the likes of Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Citadel Securities.
The exchange offers investors four coins: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.
All have experienced price surges in the past week, especially Bitcoin Cash—which is up over 118% in the past seven days, trading hands for $232.57.