Prices of digital currencies climbed higher Wednesday, bucking the recent trend which saw as much as $20 billion wiped off the market cap of cryptocurrencies to begin the week.
Bitcoin
BTCUSD, -1.81%
the world’s biggest digital currency, is trading back above $6,000 and was last changing hands at $6,352.14, up 4.5% since Tuesday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange.
Wednesday’s rally has pushed the total value of all cryptocurrencies back above $200 billion to an intraday high of $213 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Read: The cryptocurrency market has shed more than $600 billion from its peak — what exactly happened?
Bitwise gives investors new tools for tracking crypto
On Wednesday, Bitwise Asset Management, the creator of the world’s first cryptocurrency index fund, said it had added three new indexes for investors to track baskets of digital assets.
The three new indexes—Bitwise 20 Mid Cap, Bitwise 70 Small Cap and Bitwise 100 Total Market—are not yet accepting funds, but Hougan said the company is gauging interest.
”We want to get indexes out there to encapsulate the whole picture of the cryptocurrency market,” said Matt Hougan, head of research at Bitwise Asset Management. “We hope it becomes the de facto way investors look at the market as a whole.”
Bitwise currently has an application for a bitcoin-related exchange-traded fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its application differs in that it tracks a basket of coins—the HOLD 10 Index—as opposed to a single coin.
Read: A team at Northwestern think they have solved one of bitcoin’s biggest problems
Ether on the rebound
Ether
ETHUSD, -2.35%
the currency that runs on the ethereum network, has been in a free fall of late, plummeting as much as 41% in August. Industry participants have hypothesized that cash-strapped ICOs have been unloading Ether to raise money causing the second largest digital currency to underperform its rivals. However, Ether has had a revival Wednesday, last trading 10.4% higher at $285.91.
Elsewhere, Bitcoin Cash
BCHUSD, -0.95%
is trading 5.9% higher at $516.00, Litecoin
LTCUSD, -1.91%
has gained 7.3% to $56.08 and Ripple’s XRP
XRPUSD, -2.82%
is up 9.2% to 29 cents.
After a rough start to the week, bitcoin futures finished Wednesday in the green. The Cboe Global Markets Inc.’s August contract
XBTQ8, +7.37%
expired today at $6,360 and the comparable CME Group Inc August contract
BTCQ8, -2.04%
finished Wednesday up 4.4% at $6,345.
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Source : MTV
