Bitcoin, Ether Fail to Maintain Holiday Momentum, Shiba Inu Among Popular Altcoins Gain Big Ahead of Christmas

Bitcoin investors appear to have taken their foot off the pedal and book profits ahead of Christmas after a positive run over the past couple of days. A strong rally of more than 5 percent earlier this week saw Bitcoin's valuation move past the $47,500 mark (roughly Rs. 35.86 lakh) on global exchanges but failed to push past the $50,000 (roughly Rs. 37.72 lakh) mark. At the time of publishing, Bitcoin's valuation is back in the red by 0.97 percent over the past 24 hours and is priced at $51,053 (roughly Rs. 38.51 lakh) on Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber, while global exchanges like CoinMarketCap show a 1.71 percent dip to see Bitcoin valued at $48,523 (roughly Rs. 36.59 lakh).

As per CoinGecko, Bitcoin's rally, earlier this week hasn't had a profound impact on price in terms of weekly performance. Over the past week, Bitcoin's value has seen a 0.7 percent dip.

Ether's plight was no different as Ethereum blockchain's native cryptocurrency began the day in the red after an underwhelming day of trade through Wednesday. The second most-valuable cryptocurrency in the world is down 1.68 percent over the past 24 hours after a dip of 0.27 percent through Wednesday. At the time of publishing, Ether is valued at $4,163 (roughly Rs. 3.14 lakh) on CoinSwitch Kuber while values on global exchanges see the second-largest crypto by market cap pegged at $3,950 (roughly Rs. 2.98 lakh), where the coin sees a steeper dip of 2.58 percent over the past 24 hours. This corresponds to Ether down by 1.1 percent in value over the week.

Gadgets 360's cryptocurrency price tracker reveals a different story for the rest of the market. Almost every popular altcoin out there is currently in the green despite the top two coins faltering. Cardano, Polygon, Uniswap and, Polkadot were the biggest gainers on the day, while Tether, Ripple, and Chainlink also managed to mark considering gains.

Elsewhere, Dogecoin saw a rise of 1.2 percent to $0.18 (roughly Rs. 13.90), in what has been a healthy week for the original meme coin. While arch-rival Shiba Inu continues its rise with a 3.34 percent increase in value, which is now at $0.000035 (roughly Rs. 0.002631). SHIB's incredible rally this week has seen its value move up by 4 percent over the past week, buoyed by whales buying big and commercial tie-ups continuing to rise.

An Ethereum whale on Tuesday swooped up 4 trillion SHIB tokens in a single transaction worth $134 million (roughly Rs. 1,012 crore) causing Shiba Inu's value to rise by a whopping 10 percent rise through Wednesday. The entire crypto market has been on a strong rally over the past 24 hours with valuations of most popular crypto coins soaring, but the massive SHIB transaction by one particular whale saw Shiba Inu's percentage rise in value eclipse that of Bitcoin and Ether.

As per a tweet by WhaleStats, a tracker that keeps a close eye on the wallets held by the 1,000 richest Ethereum whales, Shiba Inu is the “most traded and biggest ‘hodling' token among the top 1000 ETH wallets” at the moment. That said, this is hardly the first time Shiba Inu has proven to be the preferred choice for whales in top Ethereum wallet holdings.

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