Bitcoin slipped a bit on Sunday as it continued to try to climb back up, after falling below $48,000 for a time a week ago. Ethereum, another cryptocurrency, meanwhile surged higher, getting closer to reaching $3,000.
By late Sunday afternoon, Bitcoin was edging close to hitting $57,000. That’s still a ways off from the cryptocurrency’s April high when it punched past $64,000. But it’s around 13% higher than where the coin sat at the same time a week ago.
Ethereum, however, shot up more than 34% in the past seven days, hitting $2,968.81 on Sunday, according to CoinGecko. That’s a huge gain over one year ago, when it was $214.25 to the dollar.
Other cryptos gained, as well. Binance Coin reached $627.28, up around 25% in a week, while Dogecoin — of Elon Musk tweet fame — has rose to nearly 39 cents, up 43.4%.
The volatility is expected in cryptos — including bitcoin, the most highly valued one by far. But bitcoin’s ride up over the past year or so has been dramatic.
For comparison, on March 13, 2020, bitcoin had crashed 40% intraday to $5,413, according to a report by CoinGecko, one of the largest independent cryptocurrency data aggregators.
Bitcoin’s fall over late April came after many calls for it to keep rising, and some forecasting that it would hit $100,000 at some point.
Experts gave several reasons for bitcoin’s decline that coincided with the direct listing of CoinBase (COIN) – Get Report and weak trading the days after.
“There was already a massive amount of leverage in the market in anticipation of the Coinbase” listing, Bobby Ong, CoinGecko’s chief operating officer, had told TheStreet late April. But further exacerbating the April selloff was its occurrence during a weekend when there were thinner order books, added Ong.