Cryptocurrencies dogecoin (DOGE-USD) and ethereum (ETH-USD) hit all-time highs on Tuesday morning in London following a rise in institutional interest in both tokens.
The joke token dogecoin was up more than 47%, to trade at around $0.48 by 2.45pm in London. Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency, broke the $3,500 mark earlier in the session to trade around 12% higher.
Ethereum’s previous all-time high was $3,456.57 (£2,489.18)— a consolidation of a rally of around 360% this year alone.
Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC-USD) was down by around 4.5%.
“Even though ETH’s price is touching highs unseen before, we can assess its potential for appreciation by looking at the ETH/BTC pair, which is still trading well below its all-time-high over 0.15 BTC,” said Joe DiPasquale, CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund BitBull Capital.
“The most recent resistance level on the ETH/BTC pair was 0.05, which has now been broken, and we can expect ETH to trade as high as 0.07 before meeting any significant resistance.
“Although there’s room to grow, given that ETH’s USD price has gone up significantly in a short period of time, we are likely to see a retracement towards $3,000 before another move up. But keeping the ETH/BTC ATH in mind, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a $5,000 ETH soon.”
Ethereum’s rise has been pegged to the growing number of developers building decentralised finance or “DeFi” applications on its blockchain platform, as well as a growing institutional interest in crypto as a market.
Among others, the European Investment Bank has said it will issue its first ever digital bond on a public blockchain using ethereum’s technology.
Meanwhile, the meme-inspired dogecoin also surged off the back of trading platform eToro saying it would offer it to its 20 million users.
The token has rallied around 250% from its intra-day low on 23 April, according to currency watchers FX Street.
It was trending on Twitter by the afternoon in London spurred by nearly 300,000 tweets.
Cryptocurrency trading platform Gemini also said it would take deposits of doge, with trading opening shortly.
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The moves also follow an announcement by online banking platform Revolut that it will soon allow people to directly withdraw bitcoin from their platform. This would challenge the status quo set by other platforms such as Robinhood and PayPal (PYPL), that prevent bitcoin bought on their platforms being moved elsewhere.
News also eked out over the bank holiday weekend that PayPal is mulling creating its own stablecoin — a cryptocurrency that attempts to peg its market value to some external reference.
Bitcoins fall continues following news on Friday that it had surpassed a closely-watch technical hurdle, which is usually a precursor to further gains. It had climbed past its price average over the past 50 days which is usually seen as a measure of momentum.
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