The total market value of crypto assets has exceeded $4 trillion for the first time. The driver has been Ether, which has soared 22% this week, amid a broad rally in altcoins, inflows into crypto ETFs, and the passage of a stablecoin bill by the U.S. Congress.

Details

The total market value of crypto assets has exceeded $4 trillion for the first time, which Bloomberg attributes to a rally in altcoins and momentum from a U.S. legislative push to regulate the sector.

Altcoins, a catch-all term for all tokens besides bitcoin, have led the latest leg of the crypto rally: Ether has advanced 4% today, July 18, and 22% this week. One Ether costs $3,675.81, its highest mark since January 6.

Meanwhile, Uniswap gained as much as 20.0% and Solana 6.5% today before giving back most of the gains; they were up about 2% each as of this writing.

Bitcoin was up 0.5% to $119,534, according to CoinDesk. Earlier this week, it hit a new all-time high at $123,153. 

In addition, crypto stocks were advancing in premarket trading today. Ether-linked stocks were leading the gains, noted Reuters. 

Shares of BitMine, which has a market capitalization of $2.1 billion and owns about $1 billion worth of Ether, had jumped 9% as of this writing. Other companies that hold Ether like Bit Digital (market capitalization: $1.3 billion) and BTCS ($151 million) were up 4% and 8%, respectively. 

SharpLink, which has funded its Ether treasury through stock sales in recent weeks, announced yesterday that it had added $5 billion to its current $1 billion share sale plan. The stock was down 1%.

BitMine, where tech billionaire Peter Thiel is the top investor and whose chairman is Fundstrat's Tom Lee, unveiled yesterday that it had accumulated 300,657 Ether in three weeks and intends to acquire about 5% of the total Ether supply, which now stands at 120.71 million tokens, Reuters notes.

Context

Yesterday, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to create a regulatory framework for stablecoins to legitimize the $265 billion market, which Citigroup analysts think could grow to $3.7 trillion by 2030. The bill "marks a watershed for the digital asset industry," Reuters wrote.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a separate, broader crypto market structure bill, which will now go to the Senate for consideration.

Investors continue to "flood" into U.S.-listed crypto ETFs. Bitcoin funds have attracted $5.5 billion month to date, and Ether funds $2.9 billion.

The AI translation of this story was reviewed by a human editor.

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