Bitcoin's Price Climbs Above $5,500 to Reach 5-Month High

Bitcoin’s price extended its recent gains today, spiking above $5,500 for the first time in over five months.

At 04:00 UTC, the world’s premier cryptocurrency, whose market capitalization accounts for more than half of all other cryptocurrencies combined, picked up a bid and saw its price climb as high as $5,650 in less than 10 minutes on April 23 - its highest price since Nov. 18, 2018.

At the time of writing, bitcoin’s price has since pulled back slightly, now trading across exchanges at an average price of $5,586, according to CoinDesk’s price data.

Also up roughly 1.48 percent on the day, bitcoin’s individual market capitalization rose to its highest value since mid-November, $96.9 billion, while its percent share of the broader cryptocurrency market, also known as its “dominance rate,” is currently at 53.2 percent, according to CoinMarketCap.

CoinMarketCap data also reveals the cryptocurrency’s exchange trade volume reached 15 billion in the last 24 hours, yet those figures may be misleading as suggested by a recent report from asset management firm Bitwise, which identified 95 percent of the reported trading volume on CoinMarketCap to be fake, with only 10 exchanges reporting honest figures.

These 10 exchanges combined, which include the likes Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp and more, reported $1.7 billion worth of total bitcoin trading volume in 24-hours, according to Messari.io.

Generally accompanied by a strong move in bitcoin’s price are similar movements in the USD value of most other cryptocurrencies.

Indeed, the broader market is flashing green today with nine of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap rank reporting gains above two percent, the strongest performer of which, Cardano (ADA), is now up 9.71 percent on the day, CoinDesk data shows.

In all, the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market increased roughly 6.3 billion during today’s rally and now stands at $184.3 million, down roughly 78.2 percent from it’s all-time high of $835 billion achieved on January 7, 2018.

Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency at the time of writing.

Bitcoin image via Shutterstock; charts via TradingView