At the same time, the Ethereum exchange rate jumped to $2300. The altcoin added 2.4% over the last 24 hours and 13.5% over the week. The asset outpaced bitcoin in terms of growth rates amid the return of institutionalization, writes forklog.com.
Why are cryptocurrencies growing?
The founder of 10x Research Markus Thielen believes that the price growth is largely due to the closing of short positions that traders opened during the February fall.
“Traders are closing put options with strikes of $55,000 and $60,000 en masse. They realized that these contracts are unlikely to be in the money before expiration and started to exit positions. It was the removal of these protective hedges that pushed the rate up,” he said.
Rick Maeda of Presto Research pointed to the return of institutional demand. Last week, spot bitcoin-ETFs attracted $767.3 million. Ethereum funds received $160.8 million.
Quotes were positively affected by Strategy’s purchases. Last week, the company bought 22,337 BTC for $1.57 billion. The deal was one of the five largest for the firm.
