Bitcoin Breaches All-Time High Above $35K, Sidelining Ethereum Rally

Bitcoin (BTC) was bullish at press-time and traded above the $35K mark — reaching an all-time high of $35,587.66 late Tuesday night —  as the gains in the cryptocurrency exceeded those of Ethereum (ETH).

What Happened: The apex cryptocurrency traded 10.72% higher at $35,275.05, while ETH traded 8.22% higher at $1,21,08 at press-time.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC closed 12.34% higher at $39.41 and Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETHE ended the day 14.92% higher at $13.79 on Tuesday.

Most altcoins followed Bitcoin’s lead and traded in the green with Litecoin (LTC) higher by 7.99% at $163.35 and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) up 6.34% at $427.76.

Chainlink (LINK) traded 9.95% higher at $14.65 and Monero (XMR) was up by 3.92% at $135.62.

XRP was an outlier to the trend and traded 1.63% lower at $0.23. On Tuesday, Blockchain.com became the latest cryptocurrency exchange to halt XRP trading after a lawsuit was filed against issuer Ripper Labs.

Why It Matters: Katie Stockton, a technical analyst for Fairlead Strategies, said, “The signs of exhaustion that appeared in December were absorbed via a brief consolidation phase, and there are no active overbought ‘sell’ signals,” reported CoinDesk.

“If bitcoin continues to rally at its current rate, I believe we could see a price of $54K around Valentine’s Day,” said NEM’s head of trading Nicholas Pelecanos, as per CoinDesk.

Meanwhile, the Ethereum futures market is reportedly bubbling with open interest on major venues growing to $2.95 billion in total, a rise of $350 million.

Brain Mosoff, CEO of Ether Capital said that spot price has the potential to grow and the futures are an indicator of that.

“ETH is still below the all-time high, and many believe with all the positive news in the latter half of 2020 it still has room to grow,” said Mosoff.