Bitcoin surges 10%, leading cryptocurrency market rally

Bitcoin rose above $47,500 on Friday, with the top 20 cryptocurrencies almost all in the green, as El Salvador said it mined its first bitcoin using volcano energy, while the U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said on Thursday that he has “no intention” to ban cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.91% was up 10% over the past 24 hours, recently trading at $47,572. Ether ETHUSD, -1.81% gained 9.2% over the past 24 hours, recently trading at $3,250. Cardano ADAUSD, -2.74% and Binance Coin, the third and fourth largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, went up 7.5% and 11%, respectively, over the past 24 hours.

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At Thursday midnight, El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele tweeted that “We’re still testing and installing, but this is officially the first #Bitcoin mining from the #volcanode Volcano.” The country in September adopted bitcoin as a legal tender.

The bitcoin rally could result in part from investors “buying the China ban,” analysts said. On September 24, China intensified its crackdown on crypto trading and mining, leading to a crash of the cryptocurrency market.

According to on-chain data, many investors were using the opportunity to accumulate, wrote crypto data analytics firm IntoTheBlock in its Friday notes.

“The number of addresses holding one or more Bitcoin reached a four-month high, accelerating in the days after the China ban,” IntoTheBlock wrote.

Via Market Watch