Ether rally, XRP and other altcoins



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Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency showing strong gains in recent times.

Ether, XRP and a handful of other so-called “altcoins,” or alternative cryptocurrencies, rallied on Monday, after the world’s most famous digital currency surged.

At around 9:15 a.m.ET, the ether broke above the $ 600 level, a point it hasn’t hit since June 2018, according to data from industry site CoinDesk. XRP at one point jumped 29% to almost 55 cents, hitting its highest level in more than two years.

Ether was last up around 8% in the past 24 hours at $ 595, after rising as much as 13%, while XRP was 19% higher at around 54 cents. Both are up around 350% and 180% respectively since the start of the year.

Investors in the crypto industry have said that altcoins are following the momentum that has seen bitcoin rise recently. Bitcoin crossed the $ 18,000 threshold last week and is near an all-time high of nearly $ 20,000, which it hit in late 2017 before dropping as low as $ 3,122 the following year.

“What you usually see in space is bitcoin is on the run, then some time later – maybe a few weeks, maybe a month – altcoins then go on the run,” Peter Wall , CEO of London crypto mining firm Argo Blockchain, told CNBC. “Bitcoin leads and altcoins follows.”

Another altcoin, Chainlink, rose 6% to around $ 15. It is currently up more than 740% since the start of the year.

Chainlink is often associated with a concept called “DeFi”, or decentralized finance, which aims to recreate traditional financial products such as loans without intermediaries such as banks.

DeFi has become a popular theme in crypto this year, with several new projects emerging. It has been compared to the initial coin offering, or ICO, frenzy of late 2017 which saw several new virtual coins appear.

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