First Mover Americas: Crypto Assets Rally With BTC Returning to $66K

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Crypto assets enjoyed a rally during the European morning, lifting bitcoin around 1.5% over 24 hours to $66,300 and ether 2% to $3,600. The broader digital asset market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) has climbed about 1%, with Avalanche's AVAX the biggest gainer at just under 3.9%. XRP has risen by 1.5%, while Solana's SOL gained 1.3%. SOL, as the closest thing to an ether competitor in the altcoin market, may be experiencing downside as traders anticipate the listing of spot ETH ETFs in the U.S., an event thought likely sometime in the next few months.

The VanEck Bitcoin ETF (VBTC) started trading on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). This is the first exchange-traded fund to list on the ASX, the country's largest stock exchange. VBTC rose 1% from its opening price to end the day at A$20.06 ($13.4) after trading 99,791 shares. The ETF is a feeder fund that provides exposure to bitcoin by investing in the company's Bitcoin Trust (HODL), a U.S. ETF listed on Cboe. At the start of this month, the first Australian spot bitcoin ETF, Monochrome Asset Management’s IBTC, debuted on Cboe Australia, a smaller rival to ASX.

Tokens said to be using AI technology have surged as much as 35% in the last 24 hours. Fetch.ai’s FET, SingularityNET’s AGIX and Ocean Protocol’s OCEAN led the advance while the sector added 15% on average. The growth followed gains in chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA)'s stock, which has risen 5% since Monday, making it the most valuable company in the world. "AI as a sector is hot in both traditional markets and crypto,” Edward Wilson, an analyst at Nansen.ai told CoinDesk. “It should come as no surprise that on the back of Nvidia becoming the world's most valuable company AI tokens are rallying.”

- Omkar Godbole