By 
The price of Bitcoin has surged past $9,200 in the past 24 hours by recording an increase of around $400. The cryptocurrency held strongly at $9,000 resistance level and could easily lead enter the $10,000 region in the short-term.
Many other cryptocurrencies advanced in the past two days. Surprisingly, Bitcoin Cash was leading the charts with close to 90% gains. Other good performing alts include ICON (ICX), Ethos (BQX), EOS, and Kyber Network (KNC). All of these ERC20 tokens have recorded more than 10% gains against bitcoin which also recorded a solid gain of its own at around 3%.
The Ethereum price managed to return a slightly better single-day performance, rising 8% to $684. Ethereum has a $67 billion market cap, as well as a 15.8 percent share of the total cryptocurrency market cap.
ICON’s daily trading volume has reached 15,500 BTC, with around 50 percent of that coming from the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and the other 50 percent from South Korean cryptocurrency trading platforms Bithumb and Upbit.
In all, tokens in general have demonstrated strong performances throughout April and as the market continues to recover with bitcoin’s lead, it is likely that Ethereum-based ERC20 tokens, which had shown major corrections from January to March, will record large gains in the short-term.
So far as Bitcoin is concerned, it is trading at $9,222 at the time of writing representing a market cap of $157 billion. Even though the market has added almost $200 billion since early April, the cryptocurrency market is still going through a mid-term recovery and in terms of extreme volatility and uncertainty, dominant cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum lead the market.
And like always, most of the altcoins are generally following the price trend of bitcoin and a bullish development in the bitcoin price will likely result in large gains for altcoin investors.
Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead stated that bitcoin crossed a key level earlier this month and that the value of the dominant cryptocurrency could surge throughout April and May as a result.
“Bitcoin has been growing at 165 percent a year for the six years that we have been in business. And something that is growing that fast hardly ever gets down below its 200-day moving average. When it does it is a very good time to buy. It did five years ago when we launched our first fund and it just crossed that earlier in April,” said Morehead.
Top Stories from the Crypto World
1. Bithumb to conduct an ICO in Switzerland
Some of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms valued at billions of dollars such as Binance, Kucoin, and Huobi have already released their native tokens that can be used to trade cryptocurrencies and pay fees.
On Binance for instance, users can benefit from lower fees in trading by using Binance Coin, and the company benefits from the funds it has raised through the ICO which are used to cover operational costs.
Now South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, Bithumb, revealed that Bithumb Coin will be released in two parts or types but the company has not disclosed any details about the structure or the purpose of its token. More importantly, Bithumb said that it is not seeking to conduct a public ICO but rather a token sale targeted at institutional investors and large-scale investment firms.
A good thing to know: Bithumb is a public company that is operated by BTCKorea and it is required to publish all earnings, possessions, and balance sheet of both Bithumb and its subsidiaries. Conducting an ICO can become more complicated for Bithumb as a result and the company will not reveal any more information about its ICO until it is fully ready to conduct the token sale.
2. Robinhood launches in Colorado with Bitcoin and Ethereum
The competitive landscape for cryptocurrencies is heating up in the United States. Zero-commission startup exchange Robinhood just announced on Twitter its expansion into Colorado.
The trading platform unveiled commision-free trading for leading cryptocurrencies bitcoin and Ethereum in the western state. In addition to cryptocurrencies, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based trading platform also supports stocks, ETFs and options.
Colorado, which is known for its Rocky Mountain peaks and blockchain-friendly legislation, joins a handful of states that extends to California, Massachusetts, Missouri and Montana, all of which Robinhood added in early April as part of a state-by-state rollout that is moving along.
It is important to note that while Robinhood offers zero-fee cryptocurrency trading, it also offers a premium account dubbed Robinhood Gold that has a monthly flat rate attached and higher deposit limits.
3. AWS is making Hyperledger and Ethereum easier to use
Amazon Web Services, the e-commerce giant’s cloud computing arm, has unveiled a new service for launching out-of-the-box blockchain networks for the ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric protocols.
AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr wrote that the newly available “templates” allow clients to “launch an ethereum (either public or private) or Hyperledger Fabric (private) network in a matter of minutes and with just a few clicks.”
“The templates create and configure all of the AWS resources needed to get you going in a robust and scalable fashion.” he said.
AWS is a fast-growing segment of Amazon’s business, which saw sales increase 55 percent in 2016 and 43 percent in 2017. The division is in fierce competition with other tech giants’ cloud computing arms, including Microsoft Azure, which showed an early interest in providing blockchain as a service when it partnered with the ethereum startup ConsenSys in 2015.