Key Takeaways
- Total market cap jumped 4% to $2.99 trillion as bitcoin briefly breached the $3 trillion mark on Tuesday.
- Capital rotation into altcoins sparked major gains, led by bitcoin cash surging 34% after CME news.
- Experts expect another leg up to erase bitcoin’s year-to-date losses and push altcoins to record highs.
Market Cap Nears $3 Trillion Milestone
The crypto economy closed the week in the green, with total market capitalization jumping from $2.87 trillion on Sept. 20 to $2.99 trillion—a 4% increase. In fact, the market breached $3 trillion on Tuesday as bitcoin and several altcoins reached multi-month highs.
By Thursday, total market capitalization fell back below the $3 trillion threshold as bitcoin dropped from over $87,000 to $84,000, pulling its market cap below $1.7 trillion. Despite the pull-back, the top cryptocurrency still ended the week up 4%. With just three days left in September, the price action increases the likelihood of a double-digit monthly gain.
While bitcoin posted modest gains, moving closer to breakeven for the year, several high-cap altcoins jumped 10% or more as investors rotated capital across the sector. Bitcoin cash led the charge, surging nearly 30% after CME announced plans to launch a BCH perpetual futures contract in October. After topping out at $360 on Sept. 23, BCH consolidated above $330 to seal a 34% weekly gain.
Matching BCH’s weekly performance, near protocol (NEAR) rose from $4.16 at the start of the week to a peak of $5.48. The gain coincided with reports that Bitwise’s spot NEAR exchange-traded fund (ETF) cleared key regulatory hurdles, potentially opening the asset to brokerage-account and institutional buyers. The ETF is expected to launch around Sept. 29. Together with forced buybacks, the news pushed NEAR’s weekly and year-to-date gains past 31% and 250%, respectively.
Broad Gains Across Major Tokens
Privacy coin zcash (ZEC) also posted double-digit gains, rising 11% to close above $1,600. Other major altcoins seeing double-digit growth included XRP (up 10%), solana (SOL, up 12%), dogecoin (DOGE, up 12%), and chainlink (LINK, up 13%).
A few altcoins ended the week lower. Tron (TRX) fell 2.6%, and Hyperliquid (HYPE) closed 1.1% lower at $91.71 just days after touching a fresh all-time high of $97.96. Monero (XMR) dropped 2%, and rain (RAIN) lost 10%. Gold-backed digital assets tether gold (XAUT) and pax gold (PAXG) both fell 2%.
Driven by broad-based gains across the alternative asset landscape, total altcoin market capitalization expanded from $1.25 trillion to roughly $1.3 trillion over the week. Sustained bullish momentum and a “greed” reading on the Crypto Fear and Greed Index have market analysts projecting another upward leg for digital assets, a move that would effectively wipe out bitcoin’s year-to-date losses while propelling top-performing altcoins to record highs.
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