Coming off of a day filled with decent gains, the cryptocurrency market has continued its upward rise, with most major altcoins trading up more than 3% over a 24-hour trading period. The rise in altcoins is partially due to increased stability in Bitcoin’s price, which has led increased investor’s confidence that an end-of-year rally is possible.

XRP Sees Massive Gains

At the time of writing, XRP is leading the market’s upward surge, currently trading up 11.4% at its current price of $0.54. XRP is currently trading up nearly 23% from its weekly lows of $0.44 and is rapidly approaching its three-month highs of just over $0.60.

Due to XRP’s unrivaled price rise, its market cap is quickly approaching that of Ethereum’s (ETH), and if its upward momentum is maintained it could shortly reclaim the coveted number two position behind Bitcoin. XRP’s market cap of $21.6 billion is currently only $600 million behind that of ETH’s, which is currently $22.2 billion.

Other Altcoins Surge

Although the market surge is being led by XRP, multiple other cryptocurrencies are posting major gains over the past 24-hours, with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) up over 10%, currently trading at $615.

Bitcoin Cash has seen a meteoric rise over the past week, currently trading up approximately 50% from its weekly lows of $410. The primary factor behind its price rise is the imminent Bitcoin Cash hard fork, which is scheduled to occur later this month on November 15th.

Late last week, cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced that they would be supporting the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, which means that users who hold BCH in their Binance wallet will receive free units of the forked cryptocurrency.

Traders are typically bullish preceding forking events, due to the hype and buying frenzy that stems from investors wanting to get free coins, but they typically recommend selling immediately after the fork event occurs. That being said, it is possible that BCH could see further gains over the next two weeks leading up to the forking event.

XLM is another example of a high preforming cryptocurrency, currently trading up 7% at its current price of $0.262. XLM’s price rise is the result of the recent announcement that Stellar Lumens would be airdropping up to 500 million XLM units to Blockchain Wallet users who have not used XLM yet.

Stellar’s latest initiative, worth over $130 million at current prices, is an attempt to introduce more users to the cryptocurrency and its benefits.

Market Surge Renewing Hope for End-of-Year Rally

All of these positive divergences in the cryptocurrency markets are leading to renewed market sentiment and are increasing the chances of an end-of-year rally.

Despite this, it is important to remember that Bitcoin typically leads both rallies and crashes, and since it hasn’t broken through the top of its long-established trading range, which is firmly set at $6,700, there is no definite sign of an imminent rally.

Mati Greenspan, a senior market analyst at eToro, explained to MarketWatch that the current bullish performance of the cryptocurrency markets is increasing the chances of what he calls a “Santa Claus Rally” towards the end of this year.

“It may be too early to say this, after all we’ve only seen very moderate crypto gains this week, but it is very possible that we might see a Santa Claus rally in the crypto markets.”

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