Bitcoin (BTC)’s wild December ride of ups and downs has slowed down somewhat.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency added around 40 basis points on Thursday before paring back these gains this morning.
In contrast to the 5%-plus movements penned earlier in the month, these intraday tussles suggest a lower volatility factor to end the week on.
At the time of writing, bitcoin was changing hands at $43,609, with the bulls failing to capture the coveted 45k resistance line, for now.
Bitcoin is up over 160% year to date – Source: tradingview.com
Bitcoin dominance also took an overnight hit, falling by half a percentage point to creep below 53%.
Falling bitcoin dominance suggests a surge of activity in the altcoin space, not least by the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH).
Ether is up more than 220 basis points against the US dollar today, and was trading at a seven-day high of $2,289 at the time of writing.
But Solana (SOL) remains the top performer among the blue-chip altcoins.
The SOL/USDT pair rallied nearly 15% on Thursday, and though it cooled off this morning, year-to-date gains are a walloping 829%.
Solana has successfully flipped ripple (XRP) as the fifth-largest cryptocurrency with a token price of $92 and a market capitalisation of more than $39 billion.
However, Solana still has a long way to go before fully recovering from its savage 95% collapse following the FTX implosion in late 2022.
Polkadot (DOT) and Polygon (MATIC) surged higher overnight too, while XRP, Cardano (ADA) and Dogecoin (DOGE) added low single digits to their market capitalisations.
Global cryptocurrency market cap currently stands at $1.66 trillion.
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