The cryptocurrency market was on fire overnight with strong gains being made across the board.
This took the value of the entire crypto market to over US$455 billion according to Coin Market Cap, up 5.7% since this time yesterday.
Here is the state of play on Friday morning:
The Bitcoin (BTC) price has climbed 5% over the last 24 hours to US$9,650.72 per coin, lifting its market capitalisation to US$164.2 billion. Overnight CoinDesk reported that Goldman Sachs plans to use its own money to trade bitcoin futures on behalf of its clients.
The Ethereum (ETH) price has been a huge mover during the last 24 hours and is up 12.3% to US$766.21 per token. This strong increase takes the popular cryptocurrency's market capitalisation to US$76 billion. The catalyst for this strong gain appears to be the fact that Ethereum has broken through a key resistance level of US$700.
The Ripple (XRP) price has pushed 2.6% higher since this time yesterday to 88 U.S. cents. This lifts XRP's market capitalisation up to US$34.5 billion.
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price has continued its impressive run and is up a further 2.9% over the last 24 hours to US$1,500.02 per token. The Bitcoin offshoot's market capitalisation has now increased to US$25.7 billion after more than doubling in the space of a month.
The EOS (EOS) price has been the worst performing major coin with a 5.3% decline since this time yesterday to US$17.96 per token. This reduces the EOS market capitalisation to just under US$15 billion. EOS has been on a tear over the last seven days, so this could be a case of profit-taking today.
Outside the top five it was a similar story.
Cardano (ADA) edged 0.9% higher, Litecoin (LTC) surged 7% higher, IOTA (MIOTA) was up 13%, and Stellar (XLM) and TRON (TRX) dropped slightly lower.
What's next?
If trader sentiment remains bullish then I wouldn't be surprised to see the Bitcoin price break through the symbolic US$10,000 mark in the coming days. But as we have seen many times before, sentiment can shift very quickly, so this is far from guaranteed.
