(Bloomberg) -- Crypto traders have triggered vertiginous jumps in digital assets beyond Bitcoin, stirring up memories of a buying frenzy that swept the market during the pandemic before giving way to an epic bust.
Unsung tokens such as CRV from crypto exchange Curve Finance, the TRON blockchain’s TRX and IOTA from the digital ledger of the same name have jumped over 40% in the past five days alone, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The moves reflect optimism about President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to craft friendly regulations and turn the US into the global home of crypto. Market-leader Bitcoin on Thursday briefly traded above $103,800 for the first time.
Back in 2021, speculative ardor spread from a record Bitcoin run to smaller digital assets as well as to nonfungible tokens — blockchain-based digital collectibles. That was a sign of peaking sentiment among retail investors, after which a crash wiped out $2 trillion from the crypto market.
Retail Investors
For Sean Farrell, head of digital-asset strategy at Fundstrat Global Advisors LLC, “‘late retail’ is back in full force, which confirms that, while we do not believe we are close to the cyclical top, we are no longer super early in this cycle.”
A MarketVector index of the bottom half of the largest 100 digital tokens has more than doubled since Trump’s Nov. 5 election win, topping the 46% jump in Bitcoin. But the gauge is still only at about one-third of its Covid-era peak.
“Keep in mind that the latter half of any cycle is actually where a lot of outsized returns can be made,” Fundstrat’s Farrell wrote in a note, arguing that “breadth and leverage are elevated but not over-extended.”
NFTs, South Korea
In NFTs, the Bitwise Blue-Chip NFT Collections Index rose 106% in November, the gauge’s best month in data since the start of 2022. At the same time, the measure remains well below its all-time high.
Over in South Korea — whose retail investors are famously enamored with crypto — digital-asset trading volumes on local platforms hit an unprecedented $254 billion in November, according to CCData, exceeding the turnover on the country’s benchmark Kospi equity index.
Trump this week picked a supporter of digital assets to be the next of head of the US securities regulator, and appointed the first-ever White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar.
His wider agenda of deregulation and domestic growth is lifting the mood in the US stock market too. On Thursday, meme stocks GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. posted sharp intraday rallies following a cryptic X post from Keith Gill, the online persona known as Roaring Kitty who rose to fame in 2021’s investing mania.
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