As the total crypto market cap surged over 2 percent in the past 24 hours to hover about $2.3 trillion on Friday, Ethereum (ETH) price led the altcoin in notable gains. The large-cap altcoin, with a fully diluted valuation of about $306 billion and a daily average traded volume of around $19 billion, pumped over 5 percent in the past 24 hours to trade around $2,545 on Friday during the early European session.
Following the heightened crypto volatility, more than $28 million was liquidated from the ETH derivatives market, mostly involving short traders.
Forces Behind Ethereum Price Gain Today
Rising Demand from Whales
In the past three weeks, on-chain data shows that more than 547k Ether, worth over $1.26 billion, was deposited in different crypto exchanges. In addition to the poor performance of the US spot Ether ETFs, the top-tier altcoin was trapped in a bearish outlook.
However, the whales’ behavior has gradually changed in the past two days, whereby BlackRock’s ETHA led the US spot ETH ETFs in cash inflows of about $5.24 million on Thursday. Remarkably, none of the US spot Ether ETFs registered a net cash outflow on Thursday
Bullish Crypto Outlook
The cryptocurrency market has been showing bullish momentum in the past few days following the Fed’s shift to the quantitative easing phase through a 5 bps rate cut on Wednesday. Bitcoin price has led the altcoin market in a bullish outlook after teasing above $64k earlier today, as the Bank of Japan held its interest rates unchanged at 0.25 percent.
From a technical standpoint, Ethereum price is likely to continue rising and potentially outshine Bitcoin ahead amid the ongoing crypto cash rotation favoring altcoins. Moreover, the ETH/BTC pair has significantly rebounded after dropping to a multi-year low earlier this month.
