In a sign of resilience in the cryptocurrency markets, bitcoin (BTC) recovered all of its early-week losses on Wednesday with a 4.7% rally up to and above $37,400.
Bitcoin was impacted by Tuesday’s surprising departure of Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao from Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, as part of a settlement of money laundering, bank fraud and sanctions violations brought by the US regulators.
Some traders pulled out of the market on fears of another bout of volatility like the one experienced in the midst of FTX’s collapse.
However, they have since gathered their wits and resuscitated bitcoin’s spot price to its prior position.
This morning’s trading session has been quiet in comparison, as the US takes the day off for Thanksgiving, with the BTC/USDT pair falling a few points lower to $37,390 at the time of writing.
Bitcoin is nearly 40% higher over six months– Source: tradingview.com
Ethereum (ETH) bounced back even further than bitcoin, with the second-largest cryptocurrency surging more than 6.7% on Wednesday, eclipsing Tuesday’s 4.4% dive.
At the time of writing, the ETH/USDT pair was swapping for $2,067.
Looking at the broader altcoin space, though the blue chips rallied overnight, they are all broadly in the red week on week.
Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX) have extended their losses into the double digits, while Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Cardano (ADA) have kept their losses into the low single digits.
Binance’s BNB coin has also kept its losses below 10% despite the departure of its founder and figurehead CZ.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation added 2.6% to $1.42 trillion overnight, with bitcoin dominance sitting at 52.6%.