Following the recent levels of relative volatility in the cryptocurrency markets, the bulls have now gained the upper hand and have added nearly $8 billion to the markets over the past 24-hours.

Today’s market surge has led multiple altcoins to surge over 10%, although the markets could face growing resistance as Bitcoin nears $4,000.

Bitcoin Jumps Over 4%

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading up 4.4% at its current price of just under $3,900. This has been a relatively volatile week for Bitcoin, which fell to lows of $3,600 last week before pumping to highs of nearly $4,000.

It is important to note that Bitcoin’s price was swiftly pushed downwards to $3,700 after it touched the $4,000 region earlier this week, which signals that this price could be a level of resistance. It is currently unclear as to whether or not bulls will be able to add enough buying pressure to propel Bitcoin above this price level.

Although Bitcoin is trading up over 4%, it is important to note that its trading volume has not increased significantly and is currently at approximately $5 billion.

Altcoin Surge Led by Ethereum

Currently, Ethereum (ETH) is the market’s best performing altcoin, as it is trading up over 11% at its current price of $151.5. Earlier this week, Ethereum fell to lows of $116, from which it is trading up over 30%. ETH is up 82% from its one-month lows of $83.

Ethereum’s bullish performance over the past several weeks is the result of its upcoming Constantinople fork scheduled to occur around January 16th, which will reduce the cryptocurrency’s block rewards, in turn decreasing the new ETH supply.

Alex Krüger, a popular economist on Twitter who focuses primarily on cryptocurrency-related news, discussed the upcoming Constantinople fork, concluding that it is “decidedly bullish.”

“Ethereum's Constantinople fork is coming on block 7080000, around January 16, 2019. Constantinople will reduce the block rewards from 3 to 2, decreasing new $ETH supply accordingly… On the long run, this is decidedly bullish,” Krüger said.

Furthermore, Krüger attributed Ethereum’s recent outperformance of Bitcoin to the upcoming fork, saying:

“Notable outperformance of $ETH over $BTC in the last few weeks. There's a reason for it: the upcoming fork / supply reduction. Another BAKKT delay adds to it.”

ETH’s recent price run has allowed it to surpass XRP as the second most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

EOS is also performing well today and is up nearly 10% at its current price of $2.84. EOS is up from weekly lows of $2.30.

XRP is currently outperforming Bitcoin slightly and is up 4.9% at its current price of $0.373.

All the cryptocurrencies mentioned in this article are available to trade on covesting.io