Investing.com - Cryptocurrency prices surged for the second day, with Bitcoin approaching the $4,000 mark after gaining more than 10% this week.
Bitcoin jumped 5.8% to $3,721.9 and Ethereum advanced 8.8% to $101.93 at 12:10 AM ET (05:10 GMT).
XRP surged 9.3% to $0.36526, while Litecoin gained 5.7% to $30.099.
Crypto prices clawed back form yearly lows, as the industry’s market cap recovered $10 billion since the beginning of the week, FinTech news site Hacked.com reported. Daily trade volumes have also rebounded 15% to $13.1 billion, the report said.
On Monday, Bitcoin jumped as much as 11%, the best daily performance since the last week of November, according to industry data site CoinDesk.
In other news, CEO of crypto payments platform BitPay Stephen Pair told CNBC in an interview that widespread cryptocurrency adoption is still a couple years away.
“I used to say 10 years, but now I think it’s more like 3-5 years until you can go into a restaurant, a retail establishment, and just everybody’s going to expect that that store will be able to accept a blockchain payment,” said Pair.
Pair previously said that speculation, instead of real-world use cases, was driving crypto valuations.
In May, Bloomberg also reported that the U.S. Justice Department opened a criminal probe into whether traders are manipulating the price of Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
Citing four people familiar with the matter, the report said illegal practices including spoofing and submitting fake orders to trick other traders into buying or sell are the focus of the investigation.