As bitcoin lingers just below $9,000, altcoins continue to shoot upwards, with Tezos leading the pack with almost 50% gains over the last week, and others, including Binance Coin, are not far behind.

After several weeks of enthusiastic buying, the BTC bulls are taking a break for now, which is a healthy sign for the recent rally potentially sticking. BTC now appears to be consolidating above the $8,600 and getting ready to attempt to break through the $8,830 level of resistance.

XRP remains 31% up since the turn of the year when it was trading at $0.18. Still, it is also 30% down over the past 11 days after sliding from the local high of $0.347.

Much of the upcoming price action in the crypto market will likely depend on the direction of BTC itself, with some analysts predicting it could surge significantly ahead of May’s block reward halving.

Let us take a look at how some of the top cryptocurrencies and altcoins performed last week.

Bitcoin

Although bitcoin, after several attempts, finally cracked the $10,000 threshold once again, it is struggling to get past $10,500.

The price has repeatedly tried to break through this level, but each time sellers have sent it spinning back towards $10,000 — creating a ping pong action until price finally stabilized around the $10,200 level.

Bullish price action earlier in the week was supported by comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. Powell discussed China’s digital yuan and the need for privacy among digital currencies.

Moreover, several other fundamental narratives are thought to be driving BTC’s bullish sentiment, including uncertainty around Coronavirus, the ongoing devaluation of fiat currencies by central banks and the rise of institutional trading on the CME and Bakkt platforms, and of course the upcoming BTC havening occurring in about 90 days.

The king crypto is currently trading at $8,755.25.

ETH

After an explosive week of almost 20% gains, Ether closed off the week at the $228 mark.

The digital currency shot to the limelight this week as the dApp Audius, dubbed ‘SoundCloud on the Blockchain’—was featured in Apple’s AppStore and shown to millions of Apple users.

This ETH-based dApp takes the middleman out of the music industry, allowing musicians to share their tracks directly with an audience and receive cryptocurrency as compensation.

In even more bullish news, the amount of funds locked in Defi protocols has topped $1 billion. Even when measured in the number of Ether, the amount has also hit fresh highs, suggesting the rise is a result of more than just the recent market uptick.

On the chart, Ether looks set to test the $300 level if it can break conclusively through $270 in the coming days.

Tezos

Ethereum competitor Tezos is squaring up to its rival with an even steeper uptrend, taking the price to hit $3.4. The coin is currently trading at the $2.92 mark.

The PoS coin has been pushing up ever since Coinbase exchange announced it was launching its pool staking functionality in November last year.

This set off a ripple effect, with other exchanges racing to add support for Tezos staking, causing more people to buy and stake the cryptocurrency to receive passive rewards.

Although the crypto’s current price now looks overextended, Tezos has been defying expectations in past months and could rally further despite markets predicting the contrary.

Binance BNB

Binance Coin (BNB) is up 17% on the week after Binance launched the BNB Futures contract.

On Feb. 27, BNB coin experienced an uptrend towards the $19.60 mark. Suggesting the cryptocurrency has completed the retrace since the BNB/USD line and looks as if it’s on a bullish momentum once again.

BNB had plummeted below the $17.80 mark as of Feb. 27. However, after breaking the downtrend in the next hours of trading, the BNB/USD pair saw bulls that led the price line on an uninterrupted uptrend across the $19.60 mark by 18:00 GMT.

The price then dropped toward $18.80 mark before bouncing back up towards where it currently trades at $19.07.

Conclusion

In the past week, bear trappings that have paralyzed most cryptocurrencies. However, some altcoins have experienced exceptionally large gains, with Binance Coin (BNB) up 17%, and Ripple’s XRP is following close behind with 16%.

That said, Litecoin has been one of the hardest-hit cryptocurrencies during the recent market-wide sell-off, sliding by 25% in four days

Looking forward, BTC is on course for an uncertain weekend following the past fortnight’s grueling move to the downside despite the upcoming block reward halving.

