Disclaimer: The findings of the following analysis are the sole opinions of the writer and should not be taken as investment advice

The cryptocurrency market has seen significant bullish momentum over the past week. With Bitcoin registering a new ATH on the charts, many altcoins including Polkadot have all started on their own uptrends.

In the last 7 days alone, DOT’s value has hiked by over 19 percent on the price charts. However, taking into account past precedents, DOT seemed likely to endure a price correction in the short-term.

At press time, Polkadot was trading at $25.2 with a market capitalization of over $22 billion. In the last 24-hours, the cryptocurrency surged by close to 7 percent, with a 24-hour trading volume of $4.2 billion.

Polkadot 1-day chart

According to Polkadot’s daily chart, after having witnessed a prolonged period of consolidation, the past week saw the crypto gain significantly on the charts. Since the start of the month, DOT has successfully breached its key level of resistance, turning it into a support level. At press time, the coin was trying once again to breach the resistance level at $26. If this attempt at going past the resistance level fails, then it is likely that DOT might see its price retrace towards its immediate support.

In such a scenario, a short position for traders may be beneficial. In the coming week, DOT may head towards a $19-valuation if this resistance level holds strong.

Rationale

The technical indicators, at press time, highlighted the strong presence of the buyers in the market.

The MACD underwent a bullish crossover on 4 February, but at press time, a reversal in which the Signal line can go past the MACD line seemed likely. The RSI was in the overbought zone, generally a bullish indicator. However, keeping in mind the coin’s previous price action, the RSI may plunge, as it did towards the end of January.

During that time too, the RSI had remained for a long period in the overbought zone, before seeing a strong trend reversal. If such a scenario repeats itself, DOT is likely to endure yet another price drop.

Important levels to watch out for

Resistance: $26.07

Support: $19.04, $15.91

Take Profit: $19.19

Stop Loss: $25.65

Risk/Reward: price has been on an uptrend for the past few days now. However, a trend reversal cannot be discounted and if the coin is unable to breach its immediate resistance, then a dip to the $19-price range can be expected in the coming week.

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Jude Gerald Lopez is a full time News Editor at AMBCrypto covering the US and Indian market. He is a post-graduate in English literature with around 4 years of teaching experience in Indian literature.

Polkadot Price Analysis: 19 February

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Polkadot Price Analysis: 01 February

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Polkadot Price Analysis: 21 January

Polkadot Price Analysis: 11 January

Polkadot (DOT), one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the market, has hit a new all-time high in recent hours. The virtual currency was able to reach a high of over $42 a few hours ago. However, it fell below $39 now that Bitcoin is traded close to $56,000 after reaching a new all-time high of around $57,600. 

The Polkadot ecosystem and community are getting excited about the parachain auctions. In this way, it will be possible for the Polkadot network to get connected to other blockchain networks. This is expected to increase interoperability among blockchains and help the crypto market to move forward. 

In order to increase interoperability, Polkadot uses a mechanism known as cross-chain message passing-lite. This helps different blockchains to share valuable information. The next step would be for the community and the team working on it to find issues within the code. 

As Polkadot has always promoted, they want to become a hub for crypto interoperability. This includes cross-chain data transfers and improving decentralization. With Parachains, it will be possible to help the market move in the right direction in terms of interoperability, communication and decentralization. 

The other two blockchain networks that have been discussed in recent days were both the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Ethereum (ETH). Etheruem expanded in the market as the platform to release dApps and decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions. 

Nevertheless, due to a large increase in gas fees on the Ethereum network and slow transaction times, it is becoming highly difficult to use the different solutions offered by this network. Instead, Binance Smart Chain became a more centralized alternative that is allowing users to enjoy BEP-2 trading and swapping through some DeFi projects such as PancakeSwap or Venus, among others. 

The main difference between these two networks is related to decentralization. Although Ethereum is slower and more expensive to use, it is more decentralized than the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Thus, it is a thing to take into consideration when we handle funds in both of these networks. 

With the expansion of Polkadot, we can see more interoperability between blockchain networks. This could be also helpful to Ethereum and to increase decentralization in the market. Now, we need to wait and see how the new parachains will be implemented and released to the market. This could help DOT continue moving higher if the crypto market remains in a bullish mode. 

Is the alt season finally here? That’s a tricky question to answer right now. While yes, much of the altcoin market is hiking on the charts, most alts are doing so on the back of Bitcoin’s own surge. However, it was still unclear whether the rest of the market would be able to sustain its uptrend if BTC’s price comes to a grinding halt. At press time, BTC was trading at $46,726 with a 24-hour trading volume of $53.9 billion.

Corresponding to the world’s largest cryptocurrency’s performance, the likes of Polkadot, EOS, and Dash were quick to climb up the charts.

Polkadot [DOT]

The crypto-market’s sixth-largest cryptocurrency DOT has surged up the rankings lately. In fact, over the course of the past few months, DOT has left the likes of Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, and EOS behind it on the charts.

DOT’s price performance gained a lot of impetus towards the last week of December, with BTC’s performance since allowing DOT to sustain its movement over the past few weeks. In fact, in the last 7 days alone, DOT has climbed by over 27%, with the crypto registering YTD returns of 198%.

Polkadot’s technical indicators flashed increasingly bullish signals too as the mouth of the Bollinger Bands was widening to highlight near-term price volatility, the Chaikin Money Flow was holding steady above zero, despite pointing south.

It was in the news recently after Binance Labs led a Series A funding round for Polkadot-based smart contract platform, Plasm Network.

EOS

EOS, once one of the crypto-market’s mainstays, has fallen significantly on the rankings over the past year. However, like DOT, the last few weeks have been very bullish and productive for the cryptocurrency. Ranked 17th on CoinMarketCap, EOS surged by over 50% in the last 7 days, with the crypto now trading at a level last seen back in February 2020.

Here, it should also be noted that EOS’s aforementioned hike was backed by substantial trading volume.

The bullishness in the crypto’s recent performance was evidenced by its technical indicators as the Parabolic SAR’s dotted markers were well below the price candles, the MACD line was hovering well above the Signal line on the charts.

The cryptocurrency was in the news recently after pNetwork announced that it would be launching wrapped EOS on Ethereum.

Dash [DASH]

Dash, the popular privacy-centric coin, has surged by almost 50% on the charts in the last week. Thanks to the aforementioned hike, the crypto was trading at a level last seen months ago, at the time of writing. However, it was still unclear whether the crypto would be able to sustain its uptrend in the long-term.

While the Relative Strength Index was still in the overbought zone, it was pointing south, suggesting that the crypto’s positive momentum may be stalled somewhat in the near-term. On the other hand, the Awesome Oscillator was registering an uptick in bullish market momentum.

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Jibin is a news editor at AMBCrypto. With over three years of experience as a political writer, he primarily focuses on the political impact of crypto developments. A graduate in Law and International Relations, his writing is by and large focused on cryptocurrencies from the political and financial perspective. A Liverpool FC fan. YNWA

Bitcoin Cash, Ontology, Dash Price Analysis: 24 February

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Bitfinex Derivatives, a crypto derivatives platform accessible through crypto exchange company Bitfinex, today launched perpetual contracts for Litecoin/Bitcoin and Polkadot/Bitcoin.

The new contracts are now live and allow users up to 100x leverage, contracts are settled in bitcoin (BTC).

“We’re pleased to add to our growing list of perpetual contracts available to trade on the exchange. We anticipate great interest from funds and professional investors in the new Litecoin/Bitcoin and Polkadot/Bitcoin perpetual contracts.” – Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex Derivatives

As the blockchain industry evolves and crypto achieves more mainstream adoption, crypto-native enterprises are becoming increasingly more common. The advent of smart contract platforms such as Ethereum, and more noticeably, Polkadot, has driven home the potential of blockchain technology for enterprise applications.

Functioning as cutting-edge custody service, Unido is designed for crypto-native companies as well as asset managers on the blockchain. Unido is underpinned by patent-pending private key obfuscation algorithms that offers seamless integrations with applications on other popular blockchain networks and provides the ultimate in security and governance for the user. The service allows users to manage and invest their crypto assets while benefiting from a safe and interoperable digital environment. 

Enterprises using Unido’s custody service can make use of two main features through a central dashboard. Here they can manage their assets as well as invest them. The dashboard is the entry point to a business banking portal and a decentralized finance (DeFi) vault.

The business banking portal provides crypto-native management tools that rely on smart contracts to perform payments and other management tasks. On the other hand, Unido’s DeFi Vault is a multi-signature enterprise wallet that provides a simple yet powerful tool for enterprises to invest their crypto assets into a range of popular yield-generating DeFi protocols.

Unido makes use of Polkadot’s specialized parachain technology for better scalability and overall convenience. This is how it is able to provide a better solution to alternative options for key enterprise operations such as cost management, payments, and taxes. This is all achieved in an end-to-end platform that comes with enterprise-grade security and governance structures.

A simple platform like Unido is exactly the tool that many traditional companies and asset managers might need to delve deeper into the burgeoning blockchain and cryptocurrency space. It provides the security and all-in-one features that are lacking in most currently available custody solutions.

ADA price – Hoskinson discusses Polkadot, Ethereum, Algorand and Tezos

In a recent interview with Stefania Barbaglio, Charles Hoskinson, the inventor of Cardano, shared his thoughts about competing crypto projects, such as Polkadot, Ethereum, Algorand, and Tezos, as well as other projects that “he likes.” The CEO of IOG gave his personal take on Gavin Wood, the creator of Polkadot, and Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum:

Polkadot is the example of what happens, in the difference between when you have an untrained genius designing something and a real veteran engineer who’s smart, so that’s the difference you have in [Gavin] Wood and Vitalik [Buterin]. Vitalik is an incredible bright guy […] but the thing is: raw intelligence and capability is useless […] you really need a master to redefine and give him discipline. After you done that he can become a Da Vinci.

Hoskinson says Polkadot and its founders have taken a more pragmatic approach and are doing very well with it. The Polkadot team hasn’t completely reinvented everything. “They are using our consensus algorithm, Ouroboros that they modified to have better properties for their ecosystem,” Hoskinson added.

We are of course rivals in certain respects […] but personal stuff aside, there’s a professional respect for the Polkadot team and what they’ve done.

In addition, Polkadot relies on a sharding mechanism that is significantly easier to implement than Ethereum’s, he said, even if it won’t be quite as powerful initially. Ultimately, Gavin Wood has been going the right way from the beginning, while Ethereum is still trying to do too much in parallel:

We wouldn’t have these massive gas fees, and it would be significantly harder for me to compete against Ethereum. But instead they have chosen to go with this incredibly complex roadmap that like a roadmap to hell, the so much stuff, there’s so many moving pieces. […] A lot of things can go wrong. […] we made the same mistake with Cardano, we tried way too much too quickly. […] that cost us q lot of years and I paid that price.

Hoskinson further expressed great respect for Silvio Micali, the founder of Algorand. Micali, he said, has the luxury of being at MIT and being the “big man” there. “A lot of what we use, he helped invent”. In addition, Micali “very wisely joined a business development team and built a good development team” that “writes great code.”

However, Hoskinson believes Algorand made a critical mistake that is now preventing the project from having wider adoption and the ALGO token from having greater liquidity:

I think the only mistake they made is the token distribution. I had dinner with him [Silvio Micali] years ago, and I said: ‘Silvio, you should consider doing an airdrop to Bitcoin’, […] instead of doing a new distribution. Had he done that, I think Algorand would probably be at a 5 to 10-billion-dollar market cap minimum instead and have a lot more adoption and liquidity. It’s really hard to bootstrap a new ecosystem in this market.

Although the Cardano inventor faces “relentless” hate from the Tezos community, he appreciates the project and its ideas:

Their community hates me with a relentless passion. […] On the other hand, I always said positive things about the roadmap vision and the project. I like Ocaml, it’s a great programming language, I love what they’ve done with formal methods, I really love that there are other people that think about governance, like we do.

Hoskinson also likes the approach of IOG’s partner Ergo, a small Russian startup that “deserves to be” in the top 20 to top 30. In addition, Cosmos, Ethereum Classic, Dash and Horizen are also projects with good ideas, according to Charles Hoskinson:

I certainly know Jae Kwon and the Cosmos guys who are always saying reasonable things. We obviously work with Ethereum Classic […] I really like what Dash did. They were one of the first to do treasuries and of course we like the Horizen guys that gave us an excuse to do privacy stuff, and we learned a huge amount from that.

ADA price – Hoskinson discusses Polkadot, Ethereum, Algorand and Tezos Tags: ADA price, Cardano

FD7 Ventures, a Dubai-based crypto investment fund, today said it plans to unload $750 million worth of their Bitcoin holdings over the next 30 days to buy two altcoins, Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT).

The move will reportedly better serve the needs of FD7 investors who are looking to diversify their portfolios in the cryptocurrency space. While Bitcoin presents stronger long-term opportunities, the popular cryptocurrency has become a relatively mature asset. That is why alternative successful coins have captured investor interest.

FD7 Ventures is sitting on $1 billion in Bitcoin under management, which means the fund is swapping 75% of its current assets. Instead, the fund is betting on the future of ADA and DOT, which have a combined market cap of nearly $65 billion. This compares with the value of all Bitcoin in circulation which recently crossed the $1 trillion milestone.

The excitement around the two tokens was apparent in the cryptosphere over the last few days. Polkadot price hit an all-time peak earlier this week ahead of its upcoming parachain auctions which will allow its network to connect with other established blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

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There is a lot to watch out for on the horizon, including Cardano (ADA). The token has been trading in a robust uptrend for the past few months as its upcoming update will allow users to create tokens from scratch on top of the Cardano blockchain. The protocol update will require a hard fork that was scheduled to the mainnet on March 1.

“Aside from the fact that Bitcoin was first to market and society has given it meaning as a store of value, I think Bitcoin is actually pretty useless. Projects such as Cardano, Polkadot and Ethereum are the foundation of the new internet and Web 3.0,” Says Prakash Chand, Managing Director at FD7 Ventures.

FD7 Ventures said it has already begun the process of converting their Bitcoin to Cardano and Polkadot and expects to complete the conversion transactions by March.

“I’ve been lucky enough to spend lots of time with the brightest minds in crypto, and I’m willing to bet that each of Ethereum, Cardano and Polkadot will be more valuable than Bitcoin within the next few years,” added Chand.

Traditional finance is going further down the crypto rabbit hole than you might think.

Goldman Sachs, ICAP, JPMorgan, and UBS have bought the first exchange-traded product (ETP) that offers exposure to Polkadot’s DOT cryptocurrency for clients, according to Bloomberg terminal data reviewed by CoinDesk.

These banks and brokerages purchased small amounts of shares in Switzerland-based 21Shares’ ETP, the data shows. The shares debuted Feb. 4 on the SIX Swiss Exchange at a price of $22-23 and have since climbed to $30.

The purchases suggest institutional investors’ appetite for crypto exposure in the current bull market goes beyond the market bellwether bitcoin, or even its closest rival ether. The DOT token’s market capitalization is currently over $19 billion, making it the fifth-largest crypto, according to CoinGecko data. The brainchild of Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, Polkadot is a blockchain network that supports various interconnected sub-chains called parachains. 

To be clear, these clients are not investing in DOT itself, but rather a security that tracks its performance. They won’t need to download special software to run a wallet, and the ETP meets the mundane requirements of traditional investing, such as an International Securities Identification Number.  

“We’ve seen the interest in trading cryptos increase markedly,” said Michael Lie, head of digital asset trading at Flow Traders, a market maker in crypto ETPs. “These products are an easy way to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies, without having to worry about custody.”

So far, Goldman Sachs, represented on the Bloomberg screen by the ticker symbol “GS,” purchased three lots of shares on behalf of a client, according to the data.

UBS has purchased 2,770 shares, JPMorgan under the ticker “JPMS” purchased 500 shares, ICAP purchased 1,000 shares, Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch under the ticker “MLCO” purchased 2,200 shares. 

Kepler Securities under the ticker “KEPL” purchased 550 shares, broker-dealer Instinet, owned by Japan’s Nomura and trading under the ticker “INCA,” purchased 9,280 shares, and Flow Traders, trading under the ticker “FLOW” purchased 6,897 shares.

A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs said it had no knowledge of the trades and would look into it. Requests for comment from the other banks and brokerages were not returned by press time.

There has also been an increasing number of ETPs being listed on the SIX exchange. As of Jan. 13, the exchange reported there were six ETP providers with cryptocurrency products listed on the exchange and the number of ETPs listed was 34. 

The Polkadot ETP now has over $15 million in assets under management, said Laurent Kssis, Head of ETP with 21Shares. The firm also manages the Crypto Basket Index ETP, which tracks the performance of five major cryptocurrencies. Polkadot is now the second-largest component of the index, Kssis said. 

Read more: Goldman Sachs to Enter Crypto Market ‘Soon’ With Custody Play: Source

On Jan. 6, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority banned retail investors from accessing cryptocurrency exchange-traded notes, another type of ETP, explaining it considers the products too risky for everyday consumers. Despite the ban, the Bloomberg data shows there is strong demand for crypto ETPs from big-money investors. 

Traditional financial institutions have signaled an interest in handling actual cryptocurrency, not just proxy instruments. In January, for example, CoinDesk reported that Goldman Sachs had issued a request for information (RFI) to explore digital asset custody. 

Polkadot parachain Clover Finance has closed a $3 million seed round for building a bridge between Ethereum and Polkadot, in addition to a planned future bridge with the Bitcoin blockchain.

The round was backed by Polychain, Hypersphere, Bithumb Global and Divergence Ventures, according to a blog post shared with CoinDesk. Clover isn’t alone; it joins Substrate-based project Snowfork and coding house ChainSafe in producing cross-chain bridges from Ethereum to Polkadot. 

“Clover aims to become the very first noncustodial bridge in the space,” Clover project lead Burak Keçeli said in a Telegram message to CoinDesk.

Clover’s tech backend is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a necessary step for applications like decentralized finance (DeFi) apps to work on Clover. The startup has redesigned Clover’s payment scheme to increase ease of use for ordinary consumers as well. For example, Clover has a dynamic fee schedule that increases costs proportionally to use.

The team’s work on a “two-way” peg to the Bitcoin network is still in its infancy. The proof-of-concept depends on the successful implementation of the Schnorr/Taproot and Tapscript bitcoin improvement proposals (BIPs). Those BIPs are currently being vetted by the wider Bitcoin community. 

The peg, in theory, would allow value to move between EVM-styled chains like Ethereum and Clover and the largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin.

“We believe Clover’s timing for launch gives it a unique edge to leverage upcoming Bitcoin protocol upgrades to facilitate two-way pegs between Bitcoin and Ethereum,” Polychain general partner Tekin Salimi said in a Telegram message to CoinDesk. “One of the challenges prior Bitcoin-Ethereum bridge attempts faced was in Bitcoin’s limited scripting language. We think the Bitcoin/Ethereum bridge is the most interesting feature, as it’s unique to Clover.”

Update (Feb. 18, 19:00 UTC): Added information regarding ChainSafe’s Substrate/Ethereum bridge.

In a new addition to its perpetual contracts, Bitfinex made news today with the launch of its new contracts for cryptocurrencies paired with Bitcoin such as Litecoin/Bitcoin (LTCF0:BTCF0) and Polkadot/Bitcoin (DOTF0:BTCF0).

According to the Bitfinex website, transactions in the perpetual contract and funding payments will be settled exclusively using Bitcoin, as it is typically done due to the asset being the “settlement token.”

As of last week, the derivatives platform launched perpetual contracts for Stellar and Cardano that are settled in Tether (USDt). This announcement followed the launch of new contracts for IOTA, Chainlink, and Uniswap, in November 2020.

Addressing yet another addition to the list, Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex said that the perpetual contracts are now available to trade on the exchange and that the Bitfinex team anticipates “great interest” from funds and professional investors in the new Litecoin/Bitcoin and Polkadot/Bitcoin perpetual contracts.

According to a release shared with AMBCrypto, Litecoin/Bitcoin and Polkadot/Bitcoin perpetual contracts went live on 10 February. 

The platform features several contracts for other cryptocurrencies, which include EOS, Litecoin, and Polkadot. Other than digital currencies, Bitfinex launched perpetual contracts for Silver , as well as for Tether Gold, the stablecoin pegged by gold. 

Other perpetual contracts paired with Bitcoin include Ether/Bitcoin, and a host of cryptos pairs with stablecoin Tether such as Bitcoin/Tether (BTCF0:USTF0) Litecoin/ Tether (LTC/USDt), Polkadot/Tether (DOT/USDt) among others. 

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Alisha is a full-time journalist at AMBCrypto. Her interests lie in blockchain technology, crypto-crimes, and market developments in Africa and the United States

iTrustCapital, the only low cost 24 / 7 digital asset IRA technology platform that allows investors to access cryptocurrencies, digital assets and precious metals within their retirement accounts, has announced that Polkadot (DOT) is now available on their platform.

Polkadot is the sixth largest cryptocurrency with an estimated market cap of over $22 billion. Polkadot was created by Gavin Wood, one of the original creators of Ethereum. Like Ethereum, Polkadot is designed to be a world computer of sorts that brings decentralized applications (Dapps) and the next generation of the internet (Web 3) to the masses. This revolutionary technology stack is often touted as the next-generation of Blockchain Technology, which is often called Blockchain 3.0. Polkadot has already shown an impressive ecosystem growing with over 359 projects announced to be building on their innovative technology. This not only includes the burgeoning Decentralised Finance (DeFi), but wallets, general infrastructure, tooling and more.

To help individuals better understand Polkadot and other Digital Assets, iTrustCapital has released their Free Crypto IRA guide. This guide designed to help educate investors about the tax benefits associated with using their retirement accounts (IRA, 401k, 403b, TSP...etc) to invest in cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets like Polkadot, Ethereum, Bitcoin and more.

iTrustCapital is the world's only low-cost 24/7 Crypto IRA technology platform, specifically designed to allow clients to buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies and precious metals within their retirement accounts. This can be for those focused on long term investments, or even those who are more short-term traders.

They provide a trading platform for self-directed IRA's which allows investors to establish a qualified Crypto IRA account, transfer funds from an existing IRA / 401k / retirement account custodian and perform trades 24 / 7 through leading institutional liquidity sources and cryptocurrency exchanges.

iTrustCapital touts industry leading security as well for their digital assets, with military grade wallet infrastructure provided by their partner Curv. This means investors don't need to worry about the hassles of generating and managing private keys, but receive institutional military grade security built into their platform from the very first day it's established.

Since 2018, iTrustCapital has processed over $500 million in investments and has more than 20,000 account holders with a plethora of 5 star client reviews. The company has consistently been ranked the #1 Crypto IRA platform in the US, with features in CoinDesk, Yahoo Finance, CoinTelegraph and Benzinga, among other leading publications.

Learn more about iTrustCapital at iTrustCapital.com

Web 3.0 analytics and querying platform The Graph is set to integrate with four major blockchains after going live on the Ethereum blockchain in December 2020.

The middleware application will support queries for Polkadot, Solana, NEAR and Celo on its self-hosted service with a decentralized version in the works, Tegan Kline, formerly of The Graph and now co-founder and business lead at associated firm Edge & Node, told CoinDesk in a phone interview. 

The Graph allows ecosystem participants to package queries into custom feeds called “subgraphs” in order  to provide curated API data for any blockchain or dapp need. For example, decentralized finance (DeFi) projects Uniswap, Synthetix and Aave each use The Graph for porting Ethereum data to their dapp.

Kline also noted recent growth in subgraphs for nonfungible tokens (NFT) with a 6% increase in collectible-focused data indexes from March 2020 to January 2021.

The project’s self-hosted version for Ethereum saw some 10 billion queries in January 2021 alone, which can be mainly attributed to a resurgence in DeFi asset trading, The Graph said. The ecosystem is backed by the GRT token to facilitate creation of subgraphs, which has itself enjoyed a parabolic rise alongside other DeFi tokens. CoinGecko prices the token at $2.13 at press time.

“The Graph is novel infrastructure that drastically improves the ability to build on the decentralized internet,” Director at The Graph Foundation Eva Beylin said in a statement. “Adding support to these Layer 1 blockchains is an important milestone in the evolution of Web3.”

The Graph – backed by both the newly created Graph Foundation and subgraph-focused business venture Edge & Node, among others – is also eyeing support for “Bitcoin, Cosmos, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, Flow” and others, according to the blog post shared with CoinDesk.

Correction (February 18, 18:45 UTC): The original headline of this article has been clarified to express The Graph’s support of these blockchain’s remains under construction.

Ethereum's competitor Polkadot surged again, reaching new ATH above $ 30. Meanwhile, the value of all cryptocurrencies has reached a record 1.5 trillion USD.

Bitcoin broke the record again, reaching almost $ 50,000, but it is not the only cryptocurrency that has set new heights in recent days. One of them is Polkadot (DOT), considered one of Ethereum's greatest rivals.

According to CoinMarketCap data, the DOT rate surpassed USD 30.0 on Tuesday, eventually reaching almost USD 31.0, which is the highest level in history. This means an increase of about 10% over the last 24 hours. Since the beginning of this year, the token price has already increased by 290%.

According to analysts, this is not the end of the increases. In the short term, Polkadot may rise to $ 41.0, which is more than 30% from the current price, believes analyst Rakesh Upadhyay.

Among the 20 largest altcoins in terms of capitalization, Cosmos (ATOM) rose the most, both in the last 24 hours and on a weekly basis, by 23% and 77%, respectively. Today, the cryptocurrency has set a historic high of over $ 26.

Meanwhile, the total capitalization of all cryptocurrencies in the world, of which there are over 8,000, for the first time exceeded USD 1.5 trillion - of which about 61% is Bitcoin. Recall that the USD 1 trillion round barrier was broken in early January.

In 2021, the cryptocurrency market capitalization has already increased by almost 120%, and by over 440% annually.

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), the two top cryptocurrencies by market cap, remained muted on Wednesday night but many smart contract coins were rallying.

What Happened: BTC price traded 3.47% lower at $44,829.47 and ETH was down 4.23% at $1,730 at press time.

So-called Ethereum-killer coins bucked the trend and were trading in positive territory at the same time.

Cardano (ADA) — the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap — traded 16.05% higher at $0.89. Polkadot (DOT) was up 5.02% at $24.94.

See also: How to Buy Ethereum (ETH)

Solana (SOL) spiked 7.8% at $9. The cryptocurrency touched its all-time high of $9.23 on Wednesday evening. 

Other notable gainers were Aave (AAVE) higher by 3.44% at $518.33 and Stellar (XLM) up 4.03% at $0.43. Avalanche (AVAX) traded 30% higher at $54.66.

Why It Matters: Shapeshift, a crypto management platform released a report on DOT, Near Protocol (NEAR), and Cosmos (ATOM) on Wednesday. 

The company’s head of research Kent Barton said in the report that scaling challenges have “opened the doors to other smart contract blockchains.”

Barton said while these platforms don’t have “the critical mass of developers, users, and projects that Ethereum enjoys,” the issues are not “intractable.”

On Wednesday, Curve Finance, a large automated market maker on ETH, said it would bring its platform to Polkadot’s Equilibrium parachain. The AMM would exist on both ETH and DOT, CoinDesk reported.

The move comes amid a high transaction fee on ETH that is affecting Decentralized Finance (DeFi) projects. 

When you found a new hot Ethereum DeFi project but too poor to pay gas fees. pic.twitter.com/dxGcsmMXZX

— Trevon James (@BitcoinTre) February 3, 2021

“Deep liquidity is vital for adoption of new applications like Equilibrium, as well as for the adoption of new blockchains themselves,” said Curve Finance CEO Michael Egorov, according to CoinDesk.

Is the alt season finally here? That’s a tricky question to answer right now. While yes, much of the altcoin market is hiking on the charts, most alts are doing so on the back of Bitcoin’s own surge. However, it was still unclear whether the rest of the market would be able to sustain its uptrend if BTC’s price comes to a grinding halt. At press time, BTC was trading at $46,726 with a 24-hour trading volume of $53.9 billion.

Corresponding to the world’s largest cryptocurrency’s performance, the likes of Polkadot, EOS, and Dash were quick to climb up the charts.

Polkadot [DOT]

The crypto-market’s sixth-largest cryptocurrency DOT has surged up the rankings lately. In fact, over the course of the past few months, DOT has left the likes of Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, and EOS behind it on the charts.

DOT’s price performance gained a lot of impetus towards the last week of December, with BTC’s performance since allowing DOT to sustain its movement over the past few weeks. In fact, in the last 7 days alone, DOT has climbed by over 27%, with the crypto registering YTD returns of 198%.

Polkadot’s technical indicators flashed increasingly bullish signals too as the mouth of the Bollinger Bands was widening to highlight near-term price volatility, the Chaikin Money Flow was holding steady above zero, despite pointing south.

It was in the news recently after Binance Labs led a Series A funding round for Polkadot-based smart contract platform, Plasm Network.

EOS

EOS, once one of the crypto-market’s mainstays, has fallen significantly on the rankings over the past year. However, like DOT, the last few weeks have been very bullish and productive for the cryptocurrency. Ranked 17th on CoinMarketCap, EOS surged by over 50% in the last 7 days, with the crypto now trading at a level last seen back in February 2020.

Here, it should also be noted that EOS’s aforementioned hike was backed by substantial trading volume.

The bullishness in the crypto’s recent performance was evidenced by its technical indicators as the Parabolic SAR’s dotted markers were well below the price candles, the MACD line was hovering well above the Signal line on the charts.

The cryptocurrency was in the news recently after pNetwork announced that it would be launching wrapped EOS on Ethereum.

Dash [DASH]

Dash, the popular privacy-centric coin, has surged by almost 50% on the charts in the last week. Thanks to the aforementioned hike, the crypto was trading at a level last seen months ago, at the time of writing. However, it was still unclear whether the crypto would be able to sustain its uptrend in the long-term.

While the Relative Strength Index was still in the overbought zone, it was pointing south, suggesting that the crypto’s positive momentum may be stalled somewhat in the near-term. On the other hand, the Awesome Oscillator was registering an uptick in bullish market momentum.