Investing.com - Top cryptocurrencies traded in the green as the week opened in Asia, with Bitcoin testing $9,000 without a clear market mover.
On Monday, Bitcoin added 8.23% to $8,616 by 12:40 PM ET (04:40 GMT). The coin started to rally overnight to reach $8,820.3 this morning, a new high since May 2018. It surged over 140% so far this year, or almost 70% this month.
Sharing the same momentum, Ethereum gained 7.07% to $265.01, XRP traded 6.72% hiher to $0.40721 and Litecoin rose 10.32% to $111.72.
The total market cap went up to $269.7 billion from $244.5 billion last Friday.
CNBC and Bloomberg suggested that Bitcoin was supported by the fact that mainstream companies are embracing cryptocurrency recently.
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) is reportedly working on an internal project known as Project Libra and developing its own cryptocurrency; Taiwanese phone maker HTC launched a phone with which users can store their digital coins; Fidelity Investments is finalizing plans to buy and sell the digital assets for institutional customers; U.S. telecom giant AT&T (NYSE:T) is going to allow customers to use payment processor BitPay to settle their online bills.
Separately, Swiss watchmaker Franck Muller plans to launch the Bitcoin storage watch “Encrypto” that could function as a cold wallet for the coin in collaboration with alternative assets investing firm Regal Assets.
“It takes two to tango. The more merchants that accept crypto encourages more people to adopt it and use it,” David Tawil, president of crypto hedge fund ProChain Capital, told Bloomberg.
With that said, Bitcoin is still far from its all-time high of over $19,000 in late 2017.