Bitcoin eyes US$50k, Avalanche enters crypto top 20 and Cardano hits fresh ATH

Bitcoin is making another run at US$50,000 after hitting resistance at that level early on Sunday, while Avalanche is now a top 20 crypto and Cardano has hit another all-time high.

BTC faces resistance to US$53,500, but if it manages to break above that, the next target upside would be between US$59,000 and US$61,000, says City Index analyst Tony Sycamore.

At 11.35am AEST, the original cryptocurrency was trading at US$49,893, up 1.6 per cent from 24 hours ago and its highest level since May 11, just before Elon Musk spooked the market with Tesla rejecting Bitcoin.

Ethereum was changing hands at US$3,271, up 0.6 per cent from yesterday. Sycamore said Ether had been unable to break out of its recent range from US$2,900 to US$3,350.

“The preference remains to buy a corrective pullback or a consider buying a sustained break out of the top of the range,” Sycamore wrote.

Caroline Bowler, the chief executive of BTC Markets, told Ausbiz TV this morning that the Melbourne-based crypto exchange had seen the gradual return of the retail investors to the crypto market.

“After a quiet July, we’re now seeing a busier August,” she said. “We’re seeing those guys coming back into the market.”

Just 19 of the top 100 cryptos were down from 24 hours ago, with Near Protocol the worst loser, down 7.4 per cent to $U5.75. That’s still a 78 per cent gain for past seven days.

Remittance protocol Telcoin was the biggest gainer, up 33 per cent, followed by Avalanche, which was up nearly 20 per cent to US$51.34 following Friday’s announcement of its US$180 million DeFi incentive program.

AVAX is now a top 20 crypto with a market cap of US$8.9 billion, up from the No. 38 crypto with a US$5 billion market cap back on May 9. (Then it was right ahead of Polygon (MATIC), which is now the No. 17 coin).

#Avalanche has just entered top 20 for the first time!

Massive respect for Emin Gün Sirer and everyone at Ava Labs who contributed to this amazing result – you are the dream team of crypto space.

Best part is that what we have seen so far was just a warm-up for the real show! pic.twitter.com/CVtR1sXqC5

— Moj Dedko 🔺️ (@MojDedko) August 23, 2021

$AVAX will pull a $MATIC
(with better bridges and memes) pic.twitter.com/n1ARvP1LWP

— Albert Nazarov ⬡🤝🔺 (@linkchainlink) August 21, 2021

Cardano had hit another all-time high, at US$2.84, ahead of the launch of its smart contracts next month. It was up 11.4 per cent to US$2.80 at lunchtime (Sydney time).

Joining ADA in the all-time high club were Kava and Coin98 as well as Solana, Axie Infinity, XDC Network, Perpetual Protocol and Helium over the weekend.