Cryptocurrency updates on October 6: Bitcoin above $51k; SEC has no plans to ban crypto
The cryptocurrency market is trading majorly in the green on Wednesday morning, with Bitcoin crossing the $51,000-level now. The coin has surged 23 percent over the last week.
This is the first time Bitcoin has crossed this psychologically important level
of $50,000 in a month now. The last time it did so, the crypto world was celebrating Bitcoin Day and El Salvador had begun accepting payments in BTC.
Other cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, as they are called were trading mixed today. Ether, the coin linked to the Ethereum blockchain, has surged 4 percent. It is also up over 21 percent in the last seven days.
Binance Coin, which is currently the third-largest coin by market cap is 3 percent up. Cardano, which slipped to the fourth position on the table a week ago was over one percent up. Dogecoin, the meme coin, has surged nearly five percent to trade at $0.25, up over 25 percent in a week.
Solana and Polkadot, on the other hand, continue to trade in the red along with stablecoins. Solana was down over two percent and Polkadot lost over one percent. However, both the coins have surged over 15 percent in the past week.
Other coins also participated in the rally with Litecoin surging over two percent, up nearly 20 percent this week. Shiba Inu, another meme coin made popular by Elon Musk has surged over 45 percent in the last 24 hours. The coin is up over 150 percent in the last seven days. Its rally began when Elon Musk put out a tweet:
Floki Frunkpuppy pic.twitter.com/xAr8T0Jfdf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2021
Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap
| Cryptocurrency | Current market price | 24-hour change |
| Bitcoin | $51,295 | 4.20% |
| Ether | $3,497 | 3.35% |
| Binance Coin | $438 | 2.91% |
| Cardano | $2.22 | 1.12% |
| Tether | $1 | 0.01% |
| XRP | $1.04 | 2.33% |
| Solana | $161 | -2.24% |
| Dogecoin | $0.25 | 4.66% |
| USD Coin | $0.01 | -0.01% |
| Polkadot | $30.94 | -0.93% |
As per data from coinmarketcap.com, the crypto market’s total market cap on Tuesday rose by nearly four percent to $2.90 trillion. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s dominance in the market rose by 0.34 percent to 42.64 percent.
Market participants cited the increase in institutional crypto services from banks and financial institutions to cope with rising investor demand, as one factor driving bitcoin’s surge.
Specialist crypto tracker CoinDesk released a market review on Tuesday showing a 25 percent gain for bitcoin and 32 percent gain for ether during the third quarter.
The report also cited the surge in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which use blockchain to record the ownership of digital items such as images, videos, collectibles and even land in virtual worlds. NFT sales surged to $10.7 billion in Q3.
Kraken Intelligence, a research blog from crypto exchange Kraken, noted in its September report September’s headwinds for bitcoin “appear to have positioned the market to rally higher into and throughout Q4.” It added the fourth quarter is bitcoin’s historically best quarter, with an average and median return of 119 percent and 58 percent, respectively.
Here’s a cryptocurrency news wrap
- BTC outperforms ETH, BNB, and ADA in past 24 hours
Bitcoin became one of the best performing cryptos in the past 24 hours. While Bitcoin was up over five percent, Ether was up three percent, Binance Coin was rising three percent and Cardano was up one percent. Solana is down two percent. Strength in bitcoin tends to divert attention from altcoins. Bitcoin’s dominance has also surged to 43 percent as compared to 41 percent a month ago.
- SEC delays decision on Bitcoin ETFs
US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has delayed the decision to approve four Bitcoin ETFs on Tuesday. The commission has delayed the deadline by 60 days, i.e., November 21.
- SEC has no plans to ban crypto, says Gensler
US SEC Chief Gary Gensler on Tuesday said the commission has no plans to ban crypto. When asked if SEC was planning to follow China’s steps to ban cryptos in favour of central bank digital currency (CBDC), he said, “No, that would be up to Congress.” Gensler reiterated Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell comments from last week when he said Fed has no plans to ban the asset class.
- Bitcoin has never once suffered a downtime, unlike some apps we know
While Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down for hours on Monday night, crypto enthusiasts reminded the world of the power of decentralisation. The outage was one of the biggest in the history of outages, giving crypto proponents a reason to be smug as Bitcoin, in its history, has never once suffered an outage. Other cryptos have, for example, Solana’s recent outage but not Bitcoin. Plus, Bitcoin’s market cap is greater than that of Facebook now.
OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, saw daily trading volumes rising to their highest levels in a month. According to a report on CoinMarketCap, the marketplace witnessed sales worth $157 million on Monday. All because an obscure new NFT collection is in town.
Top 3 trending crypto assets
| Cryptocurrency | Current market price | 24-hour gain |
| Axie Infinity | $139.41 | 1.53% |
| Ronin Gamez | $0.001289 | 45.21% |
| BabySpaceFloki | $0.000000000809 | -8.22% |
Top 3 gainers
| Cryptocurrency | Current market price | 24-hour gain |
| Flokinomics | $0.000001072 | 2531% |
| FOMO BABY | $0.000000000836 | 575% |
| Kawakami Inu | $0.000004706 | 288% |
Top 3 losers
| Cryptocurrency | Current market price | 24-hour loss |
| Big Digital Shares | $0.02068 | -88% |
| Themis | $0.05058 | -72% |
| Anime Token | $0.001111 | -70% |
 (Data is sourced from coinmarketcap.com)
(With inputs from Reuters)