Bitcoin (BTC) 9 Pct Breakout at $3,700 Makes Bulls Happy, at Least for Now

Bitcoin (BTC) traders heaved a sigh of relief following the crypto’s slight move upwards early today, a breakout long overdue.

BTC has breached the $3,600 price mark from a long tight trading pattern, along with other major digital currencies that have been under the mercy of bears.

In just a matter of hours, bitcoin surged strongly past $3,500, then $3,600, and even $3,700 at one instance, with lots of buy-side pressure to boot.

In the past weeks, traders had become used to seeing transitions of under the hundred-dollar level in one session and today’s breakout is rather good news.

BTC has been dropping on a consistent basis since reaching an all-time peak of nearly $20,000 in December 2017, forcing many crypto and blockchain startups to retrench and leaving many investors desperate for signs on which direction the market will shift to next.

Shot in the arm: 9 pct recovery

As of mid-trading day, bitcoin rallied above the $3,450 point and was trading at around $3,640, indicating a 9.05 pct recovery for the day. It ushered the week at around $3,494 on February 1, falling as low as $3,397 a week later.

The other noteworthy occurrence on the market today was the reshuffling of the 5 key coins in terms of market capitalization. Litecoin overtook EOS for fourth place in the rankings. On the top 20 list, LTC is the heavy advancer, soaring almost 25 pct and trading at $41.925, while Ethereum has also finally extricated itself from the $100 mark, which is welcome news to everyone.

Meanwhile, Ripple (XRP) soared by 5.69 pct in the last 24 hours, and now trades at around $0.307 as of this posting. The largest altcoin by market cap, currently valued around $12.7 billion, XRP moved up 0.12 pct on the week, while its monthly decline is about 15 percent.

The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is currently around $120.4 billion, while at the start of the day it was around $111.5 billion, based on the CoinMarketCap Index.