Investing.com - Bitcoin traded higher on Wednesday, extending its rally to five days and pushing the crypto sector higher, despite losses registered by its closest rival alt coins.
Bitcoin jumped 5.6% to $12,992.8 on the Investing.com Index by 8:27 AM ET (12:27 GMT), in a move that lacked clear triggers. It has been on a tear since the Federal Reserve signalled that it would stop raising interest rates, and has continued to gain as the prospect of a new cycle of interest rate cuts has loomed ever larger.
While Bitcoin remained below its 2019 high, the largest alt coin has climbed to 65% of total cryptocurrency market capitalization, its highest level since the beginning of December 2017, according to a report from cryptocurrency website Cryptopotato. That was just before the height of the cryptocurrency frenzy took bitcoin to nearly $20,000 before plummeting to almost $3,000.
Accordingly, the largest cryptocurrency was the main driver for overall gains in the sector on Wednesday as total market cap rose to $356.34 billion, compared to $348.23 billion a day earlier.
Among its closest rivals, Ethereum dropped 0.8% to $307.72, XRP fell 0.9% to $0.3911, while Litecoin traded down 1.0% to $118.271.
Matt Simpson, technical analyst at trading house City Index, said in a note on Wednesday that bitcoin had potential to hit new highs for the year as the bias will remain bullish above $12,100.
Beyond the year’s high of $13,929.8, Simpson suggested that current charts pointed to an initial target of around $14,290. “But (it) can eventually travel further and is certainly something to consider given the strength of the underlying trend,” he said.
In other cryptocurrency news, Fortune reported Wednesday that Visa (NYSE:V) has invested millions of dollars in Anchorage, a startup that secures digital coin holdings for institutional investors.
The financial magazine noted that it was the second known investment from Visa (NYSE:V) in a cryptocurrency startup and that both companies were founding members of Libra, a digital coin project pioneered by Facebook (NASDAQ:FB).