Weekend Recovery Sees Ether Outperform Bitcoin as ETH Gains 5%

Varuni Trivedi
20 Mar, 2022

(FX Empire) A wave of bullishness swept the market as the top two cryptocurrencies – BTC and ETH, finally noted decent gains.

Of late, weekends have approached the crypto markets with high volatility and generally downhill price movement. This Friday, however, came as a relief to most crypto traders and investors who anticipated an uptick for quite some time.

Much-Needed Breather
Bitcoin (BTC) saw upward price action during the late hours on March 18, as the coin briefly traded above $42,300. Similarly, ether (ETH) traded as high as $2940 as bulls expected the top altcoin to reclaim the $3000 mark.

On March 16, after BTC’s price moved above the $40,000 mark, the coin’s trading volume across exchanges declined. Data from Santiment highlighted that bitcoin’s rise to $42.3K on Friday was propelled by plenty of short liquidations. Excess short liquidations often coincide with price gains, as seen below.

Notably, BTC funding rates continued to provide a good insight into how traders place their bets. Funding rates are periodic payments either to long or short traders based on the difference between perpetual contract markets and spot prices.

After the recent price uptick, the average funding rate, or the cost of holding long BTC positions in the perpetual futures in the perpetual swaps market, noted higher values. The rise in funding rate could reflect possible bullish sentiment.

While BTC saw its bullish turn in price over the day, at press time, the price was back to $41,788.60, noting a 3.42% rise in 24-hours.

Ethereum Leading the Rally
While BTC’s recent upswing was notable, ether was the standout in price gains among the top ten cryptocurrencies. ETH climbed 5.36% in the past 24 hours, trading at $2,957, just shy of $3,000.

Data from Santiment presented that ETH was back above $2,900 for the first time since March 2 as whale transactions noted a significant uptick. That said, March 18 was the first day with over 7,000 $100K+ transactions on the ETH network since the Russia-Ukraine news broke.

The rise in network and whale activity could lead to a much-awaited price recovery for ETH.