Bitcoin nears $43,000

Bitcoin shot above $40,000 on Friday and spent much of the weekend steadily climbing. As Sunday night gave way to a new week, there was BTC, rising another 2% to $42,400. A quick check of the largest crypto as of 8:30 a.m. (EST) revealed it sitting just below $43,000.

Crypto is suddenly rocking.

Looking at the Big Ten, Polkadot (DOT) and Terra each rose 20% over seven days. Zooming out, and definitely not dismissing meme coins, there's 14th-largest digital asset, Shiba Inu (SHIB), which, when we took a gander on Sunday night, had gained a whopping 37% over the prior seven days.

On Monday, as of 8 a.m. (EST), SHIB was an eye-popping +24% over the past 24 hours. Social media chatter suggests that a newly announced fast food restaurant partnership has created a buzz; also, as possible catalysts go, there's the prospect of some form of upgrade. ZyCrypto in a report today referenced the impending launch of a public testnet of Shibarium, a layer-2 blockchain for SHIB. A private testnet is already live, ZyCrypto said.

Meanwhile, crypto-native record label Bigger Entertainment, which for publicity routinely buys and destroys SHIB tokens during live-streamed burn parties, has said that it wants to turn Valentine's Day into the largest meme coin bonfire ever (U.Today).

It has been more than three months since SHIB hit $0.00008616, an all-time high, per CoinGecko. Even with today's bounce, SHIB remains down 67% since then. Over the past 30 days, SHIB is still slightly in the red.

While we're eyeballing battered coins on a monthly basis, check out XRP turning slightly green over a 30-day period, nearing $0.77. XRP is among several Top 20 coins making impressive moves today, shaking off a poor start to the year.

The time soon could be right to take a position in some altcoins that have taken a beating and are now primed for a turnaround should BTC’s show of strength persist, Pentoshi said.

According to CoinDesk, BTC’s trading volume, across major centralized exchanges, was down significantly from Friday, although in line with most weekdays this past week, which was markedly slow, trading-wise. Spot trading volume fell with Southeast Asian markets closed all of last week for the Lunar New Year holidays. Mainland China's stock markets jumped as trading there resumed earlier today.

BTC has been in an ascending pattern for two weeks. Taking a longer-horizon view, counting waves, the largest crypto is showing signs of having overcome a broader, wider-angle corrective period that technically traces back to last April; and now BTC seems poised to possibly unleash blazing-hot bullish impulses lurking just below the surface. Maybe.

Go compare longer-term CME futures contracts and spot market price. That premium is, in and of itself, a crucial signal. At the moment, it sits betwixt and between, as read from a technician's perch, in that it does not flash all that bullishly, nor does it necessarily scream "danger ahead." Data shows that institutional traders' sentiment, as measured via futures bets, remain right below the "neutral" threshold, Cointelegraph said.

So, okay, not the most resounding affirmation but at least it's evidence of a rejection of the bearish market structure.