Bitcoin was finally able to break its months-long negative streak with a 17% increase in July.
Alternative coins have calmed down since the start of the weekend, and have gone like this for the past 24 hours. Polkadot is one of the few exceptions whose prices have increased significantly.
Bitcoin Stalls at $23K
The past several days went quite well for the primary cryptocurrency, especially after the US Federal Reserve hiked the interest rates by 75 basis points and President Biden reinvented the meaning of a recession.
These developments pushed the asset north, from lows of $21,000 to over $24,500 in a matter of days. The latter became the highest price tag for BTC in more than a month.
However, bitcoin couldn’t sustain that level and returned below $24,000 shortly after. It spent the weekend primarily there, aside from one brief pump-and-dump that drove it to $24,200 and $23,400. Thus, bitcoin closed July with a 17% increase – the best month the asset has seen since October 2021.
As of now, bitcoin still stands at just over $23,000, and its market cap has shrunk to just under $450 billion.
Polkadot Leads the Alts
The alternative coins mimicked BTC’s performance in the past several days, meaning that most stand calm now.
Ethereum reached a multi-week high of over $1,700 a few days ago. Now, however, the second largest crypto sits just below that level after a minor daily drop.
Binance Coin, Cardano, Solana, Dogecoin, and Avalanche have decreased by similar percentages.
Ripple and Polygon are down about 3%. Ethereum Classic, which has been the most recent traveler, is down 8.3% in one day and is trading at $37.
Polkadot, on the other hand, is up by 7% and is the best performer from the larger-cap alts. Consequently, DOT sits close to $9.
From lower and mid-cap altcoins, Filecoin continues to steal the show with a massive 22% gain. As a result, the FIL is up to $10.
The overall crypto market cap sits calmly at around $1.1 trillion.
