Altcoins Pose Strong Rally Taking the Crypto Market Cap Higher, Ethereum (ETH) Surges Past $2100

06. Apr 2021 Posted by Akolkar B on News

The overall cryptocurrency market cap has been showing strength with altcoins leading from the front amid the Bitcoin (BTC) consolidation. The top-ten altcoins in the market have shown major strength in this market rally.

Ethereum (ETH) the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has surged past $2100 hitting its new all-time high. At press time, ETH is trading at a price of $2066 with a market cap of $238 billion.

Ethereum (ETH) has been one of the top-performing cryptocurrencies in 2021 so far. The ETH price has surged more than 150% year-to-date. On the other hand, Ethereum (ETH) has also emerged as one of the top crypto picks by institutional players, after Bitcoin.

The ETH supply at the exchanges has been drying up faster than expected. This is because most institutional purchases or either moving to cold storage or for staking at the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contracts.

Billionaire investors Marc Cuban recently praised the Ethereum technology and said that he has 30% of his crypto portfolio exposure to ETH. Speaking to CNBC, Cuban said that what really got him excited about Ethereum was smart contracts.

“Smart contracts came along, and that created DeFi [or decentralized finance] and NFTs [or nonfungible tokens]. That’s what changed the game. That’s what got me excited. That’s why it’s a lot like the internet,” he said.

In addition to Ethereum (ETH), some of the other top-ten altcoins are showing strong momentum. Ripple’s XRP has surged fast over the last week moving past $1.00 for the first time in three years since the early 2018 bull run. This is a major milestone for XRP investors considering Ripple has been through several regulatory hurdles in recent months.

At press time, XRP is trading at $0.92 with a market cap of $43 billion. In addition to XRP, altcoins like Binance Coin (BNB) and Polkadot (DOT) have surged to their all-time highs. Over the last week, some of the lesser-heard altcoins have made their way into the top-ten crypto list.

Some of these names include Filecoin (FIL), BitTorrent (BTT), and Theta (THETA). All in all, in addition to Bitcoin (BTC), altcoins have been strong contributors to the crypto market rally.