Bitcoin Price Rally Continues as Crypto Market Cap Eyes $220 Billion

The bitcoin price continued its mid-week recovery on Thursday. The flagship cryptocurrency climbed past $7,400, bringing it to a seven-day high and placing it within striking distance of its all-time record. However, the rally was largely isolated to bitcoin — at least at the top of the charts — and eight of the 10 largest cryptocurrencies experienced net declines for the day.

Nevertheless, fueled by bitcoin’s rise — as well as a strong showing from certain crypto assets located outside the top 10 — the total cryptocurrency market cap made a minor advance. For the day, the crypto market cap rose from $216 billion to $219.5 billion, a net increase of about 2%. At present, bitcoin accounts for a dominant 56.3% share of that capitalization.

 ​Bitcoin Price Rallies Past $7,400

The bitcoin price continued to rise as the markets traded on the news that mobile financial services app Square Cash had begun a bitcoin pilot program that allows a limited a number of users to buy and sell bitcoin from within the app. Many people believe this is the first step toward Square implementing full bitcoin payment integration — a move that could be a tipping point for cryptocurrency adoption.

Against this backdrop, the bitcoin price briefly crossed $7,500 for the first time in a week, although it has since dipped to $7,405. This nevertheless represents a 24-hour increase of 5% and translates into a $123.5 billion market cap.

Ethereum Price Pulls Back to $325

Ethereum’s multi-day price rally stalled on Thursday, preventing the second-largest cryptocurrency from cracking the $350 mark. The ethereum price posted a net decline of 3% and is currently trading just below $326. Ethereum now has a market cap of $31.2 billion.

Bitcoin Cash Price Feels the Weight of BitMEX

Ethereum was not the only major cryptocurrency to initiate a 24-hour retreat. The bitcoin cash price plunged by more than 13% — far and away the worst performance of any top-tier cryptocurrency — and is currently trading at $1,110. This leaves bitcoin cash with a market cap of $18.7 billion.

​Today’s bitcoin cash price decline could be interpreted as a healthy pullback following last week’s surprising rally, but it may also have something to do with the markets waking up to the fact that several liquidation events remain on bitcoin cash’s horizon. Coinbase has still not made airdropped BCH available to its users, and both Grayscale Investments and derivatives exchange BitMEX intend to dump their BCH holdings and distribute the proceeds to their shareholders and users, respectively. Each of these events could place significant downward pressure on the bitcoin cash price.

IOTA Swims Against the Current

Eight of the 10 largest cryptocurrencies posted declines against the dollar on Thursday, although — aside from bitcoin cash — most of those declines were minor.

The ripple price declined six-tenths of one percent, and the litecoin price dipped by 2%. The dash price dropped 5%, but it continues to trade well over $400 following its recent surge. The IOTA price was the lone top-tier altcoin to join bitcoin in its advance. The IOTA price leaped by 14% to $0.778, raising it to seventh in the market cap rankings.

NEO, now ranked eighth, declined by 2%, while anonymity-centric monero dropped by 1% following another round of negative press coverage connected with its implementation by hackers into mining malware. NEM held onto the 10th position after posting a decline of less than 1%.

Although top 10 altcoins exhibited disappointing performance, there was some interesting movement just below them on the charts.
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Twelfth-ranked lisk rose by 20% to raise its market cap above $1 billion for the first time, and hshare’s 32% surge placed it less than $50 million below that threshold as well. Qtum, ranked 14th, rose 9% to bring its valuation to just below $940 million, and EOS posted a double-digit increase to place its capitalization near $900 million.