Bitcoin (BTC) touched $58,000 on Thursday as the latest phase of its comeback seemed to come at the expense of altcoins.
Bitcoin claws back lost limelight
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD’s return to battle familiar resistance near old all-time highs on Thursday.
The move builds on strength from earlier in the week. As Cointelegraph reported, Wednesday saw $57,000 and 5% daily gains.
As analysts began to note, however, altcoins are facing increasing pressure from a newly invigorated Bitcoin, which just days before had been left in the shade by their performance.
Thursday, thus, saw 4.4% growth on BTC/USD, while Binance Coin (BNB) and Dogecoin (DOGE), previously the week’s high flyers, were both flat.
Other altcoins did manage to deliver impressive returns and beat Bitcoin on the day, notably Cardano (ADA) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which were up 16% and 22%, respectively, at the time of writing.
“Good start of the day: both ETHUSD and BTC bouncing from the expected levels,” popular trader Crypto Ed summarized about the state of the market.
The largest cryptocurrency thus again faced final resistance beginning at just under $60,000.
Bank BTC adoption strikes a chord
Bitcoin had benefited from a major United States bank adoption announcement, which was followed by news that the largest e-commerce company in Latin America, MercadoLibre, had added $7.6 million of BTC to its balance sheet.
“As part of our treasury strategy this quarter we purchased $7.8 million in bitcoin, a digital asset that we are disclosing within our indefinite-lived intangible assets,” a filing with U.S. regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed.
There are now six companies with at least $11.4 million in Bitcoin on their balance sheets, corresponding to at least 8,027 BTC. MicroStrategy, which only entered the market last August, is still by far the largest player with over 91,000 BTC.