After surging rapidly for past one week, most cryptocurrencies including bitcoin traded flat on Thursday. Bitcoin prices fell by 0.38 percent in the global crypto exchanges to trade at $47,173. Ethereum rose marginally to trade at $3,410; ripple was trading at $0.867, as per Coin Desk data.
At the same time, Solana surged 13.5 percent to $127, cardano rose 1.6 percent to trade at $1.21, avalanche rose 6.75 percent to hit $99 and polkadot rose 2 percent to $22.75, the Coin Desk data showed.
However, bitcoin prices have increased in the past one week from $42,979 on March 24 to $47,100 on March 31, a significant jump of 9.5 percent.
The total value of the crypto market surged to $2 trillion and it hit $2.16 trillion on Thursday. Even alone bitcoin's market cap touched $896 billion on Thursday, according to CoinMarketCap.
However, the industry’s market cap is still significantly lower than $3 trillion which the market hit briefly on November 10 last year when bitcoin touched $69,000, Reuters reported.
Analysts have attributed the increase in crypto prices to a number of bullish trends that have been forming throughout March, which include a declining supply of bitcoin on crypto exchanges. Also, there have been rumours that some other countries could be taking steps to follow El Salvador in embracing bitcoin as a legal form of tender.
Besides, MacroStrategy, a subsidiary of MicroStrategy, recently closed a $205 million bitcoin-collateralised loan with Silvergate Bank to purchase bitcoin.
In past two months, bitcoin prices have increased 22.6 percent. On February 28, the price closed at $43,193, and on January 31, the bitcoin price closed at $38,483, according to CoinMarketCap data. It hit briefly hit $48,000 on Wednesday for the first time since early January, but fell lower than $48,000 to trade around $47,173 on Thursday.
Meanwhile, crypto exchange Blockchain.com hit a $14 billion valuation in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with "major participation" from Baille Gifford & Co, Bloomberg News reported.
Also, environmentalists have recently launched a campaign to encourage the crypto industry to change bitcoin’s underlying code to slash its power consumption.
The campaign known as 'Change the Code Not the Climate' argues that moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake would decrease bitcoin’s energy requirements by up to 99 per cent.