It has been a stunning 24 hours of trade for the crypto market and strong gains are being seen across the board on Thursday morning.
The rampant buying has lifted the value of the entire market by a whopping 16% since this time yesterday to US$141.8 billion according to Coin Market Cap.
Why are cryptocurrencies rocketing higher?
While a rebound in prices was always going to be a possibility after such a sharp drop over the last few weeks, the timing is quite surprising.
Yesterday the head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warned that a much-anticipated Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) was unlikely any time soon.
According to Forbes, U.S. SEC chairman Jay Clayton explained that the lack of investor protection was largely why it was unlikely the agency would be approving such an ETF in the near future.
In theory this should be a blow for the market as many had hopes that an ETF would lead to institutional money flooding into the market and lifting prices higher.
So what drove prices higher?
The likely catalyst for this gain was news that Nasdaq intends to push ahead with plans to launch Bitcoin futures despite the recent collapse in prices.
The world's second-largest stock exchange will team up with VanEck to launch a Bitcoin futures product in the first quarter of 2019.
How long these gains last, only time will tell. But for now, here's the state of play on the market compared to 24 hours ago:
The Bitcoin (BTC) price has jumped 15.7% to US$4,352.07 per coin. This has lifted the crypto giant's market capitalisation to US$75.7 billion.
The Ripple (XRP) price is up 13.8% to 39.79 U.S. cents. This gain has increased the XRP market capitalisation to US$16 billion.
The Ethereum (ETH) price has stormed 16.6% higher to US$106.84 per token. The ETH market capitalisation has lifted to US$11.05 billion following this gain.
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price has jumped 11.5% to US$196.08, lifting the Bitcoin offshoot's market capitalisation to US$3.4 billion.
The Stellar (XLM) price is up 17.4% to 16.5 U.S. cents. This gain increases Stellar's market capitalisation to just under US$3.2 billion.
Outside the top five the strong gains continued. EOS (EOS) is up 12.9%, Litecoin (LTC) is 18% higher, Tether (USDT) is up 1.7%, Bitcoin SV (BSV) has risen 0.7%, and Cardano (ADA) has rocketed 21.5% higher.
