Bitcoin En Route to $100K, Ripple Explodes 66% Weekly, Cardano Eyes $1: This Week’s Crypto Recap

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This week, the total cryptocurrency market exploded above $3.4 trillion for the first time in history, adding close to $400 billion in the process. This comes on the back of considerable gains across the board, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Ripple, Cardano, and more.

Let’s start with Bitcoin – the primary cryptocurrency that has been teasing traders by breaking out to $100K for more than a day now, inching closer and closer each time. At the time of this writing, it’s trading at slightly below $99,000, less than two percent away from $100,000.

That said, Bitcoin is not the biggest start this week. This title belongs to none other than Ripple’s XRP. The cryptocurrency exploded by over 66% in a whopping rally propelled by what seems to be the biggest news of the week. Of course, I’m talking about the latest thread by the Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – Gary Gensler. Recall that when he was campaigning at the Bitcoin 2024 conference earlier this year, President-elect Donald Trump promised to fire him on his first day in office. Well, he won’t have to.

Gensler said that he would step down from his position on the same day Trump was inaugurated – January 20th, 2025. This sent the market slightly higher, but XRP benefitted the most. It’s up more than 30% in the past 24 hours following the news.

Another cryptocurrency that performed really well is Cardano’s ADA – it’s up by almost 45% in the past week and it’s currently eyeing $1.

All in all, the week has been incredibly bullish for the entire industry, and many other altcoins have also charted serious gains. For example, Solana (SOL) broke its former all-time high and increased by more than 20%. Avalanche’s AVAX is up more than 25%, and so forth.

All eyes are currently on Bitcoin and whether or not it will be able to break above $100K. This is a major psychological level that the entire industry has been waiting for a while now, and many experts seem to think that there will be a correction after that. They seem to think that it’s a major profit-taking level.

Regardless of what happens next, one thing is certain – we are in for a wild ride, so stay tuned!

Market Data

Market Cap: $3.42T | 24H Vol: $291B | BTC Dominance: 57%

BTC: $98,635 (+11.1%) | ETH: $3,309 ( +9% ) | XRP: $1.46 (+68%%)

This Week’s Crypto Headlines You Can’t Miss

MicroStrategy Announces Another Massive BTC Purchase for Over $4.5 Billion. Another week, another massive purchase from the Saylor-led business intelligence company. This time, MicroStrategy broke the record for the biggest single BTC buy as it allocated more than $4.5 billion to accumulate 51.780 BTC. Its stash has skyrocketed to over 330,000 BTC now.

Bitcoin Market Cap Approaches $2 Trillion, Targets Amazon and Alphabet. The week saw several consecutive all-time highs, as mentioned above, for bitcoin, with the latest (currently) pushing the asset to $99,500. Its market cap shot up to nearly $2 trillion, which solidified its position as the seventh-largest asset in the world.

Stablecoin Supply Hits Record $176.2B Amid Market Recovery. The record-setting week saw multiple peaks from various asset classes. The overall stablecoin supply exceeded $176 billion for the first time ever, with Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC leading the pack. The former’s market cap stands at over $130 billion now, while the latter’s is just shy of $40 billion.

Supply Shock: Bitcoin ETFs Sucked up 9,000 BTC Daily While Only 450 Were Mined. Investors continue to accumulate BTC through the US-based spot Bitcoin ETFs. On November 19 alone, 9,000 BTC was purchased via the ETFs in the States, while the amount of newly-mined BTC per day stands at around 450. This has led to numerous speculations about a supply shock.

Ripple Whales and Sharks Are Buying as Retail Are Selling: Is That Bullish for XRP? Ripple’s native token has been at the forefront of this week’s price increases, gaining more than 60% since last Friday. A recent report indicated that this rally was driven by whales and sharks purchasing XRP tokens, mostly from retail investors who are trying to take some profits off the table.

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler Confirms He Will Step Down In January. Perhaps the biggest reason for XRP’s aforementioned price spike came on Thursday evening when current SEC Chair, Gary Gensler, said he will be leaving the agency in mid-January. This was regarded as a bullish development for a lot of tokens, mostly XRP, due to the SEC’s ongoing war against certain companies, such as Ripple.