Cryptocurrencies gain as investor sentiment stays strong

Crypto investors stayed hopeful following a spate of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund applications in June

Bitcoin dropped and Ether increased on Monday, while the leading cryptocurrencies firmed. Investor sentiment stayed strong after the surge of institutional interest in crypto from a number of Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications in the closing weeks of June.

Bitcoin dropped 0.31 per cent to $30,632. Ether advanced 0.4 per cent to trade at $1,963, hovering above $1,900 since Sunday.

Crypto investors stayed hopeful following a spate of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund applications in June. Among the most recent institutional players, asset management giant Fidelity filed a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund application in the past week.

Jonas Betz, crypto market analyst and founder of Betz Crypto, told Forkast that it is clear that a race is currently ongoing among institutional companies to get a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund approved. Whether such an ETF will be approved soon and which one will be the first is known only to Gensler, but it is safe to state that news of an approved exchange-traded fund will have a positive effect on the price of Bitcoin in the short as well as long term.

An exchange-traded fund will considerably lower the hurdles to exposure to Bitcoin by providing an easily accessible investment vehicle and thus lifting demand for Bitcoin, Betz added.

Polkadot’s Dot token was the day’s biggest advancer among the leading currencies, adding 4.48 per cent to $5.50, followed by Ether that rose 2.43 per cent during the last 24 hours. The XRP token was the only one in the red, dropping 0.02 per cent to $0.4824.

The total crypto market cap over the past 24 hours increased 1.18 per cent to $1.21 trillion and market volume rose 20.72 per cent to $31.55 billion, as per CoinMarketCap data.