Blur, Arbitrum Lead Altcoin Surge as Traders Anticipate Bull Run

Key takeaways

• BLUR has risen by 22% in the past 24-hours after being listed on South Korean exchange Upbit.
• Trading volume across numerous altcoins has increased significantly.
• Open interest is at record highs for several altcoins.

A series of decentralized finance and NFT-related altcoins have posted double-digit gains over the past week as capital begins to flow from larger assets like bitcoin BTC$68,990.35 and ether ETH$2,004.84 to more speculative tokens like BLUR$0.02145 and arbitrum ARB$0.1152.

Over the past 24-hours Blur, which is the native token of its namesake's NFT exchange, has risen by more than 22% after it was listed on South Korean trading platform Upbit.

The move coincided with a notable spike in trading volume, with $241 million being racked up in the past 24-hours - a 1,240% increase on the previous day, according to CoinmarketCap data.

The magnitude of the rally represents a shift in sentiment from three weeks ago when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went on the offensive against altcoins that it labelled securities.

With Bitcoin trading comfortably above $30,000 following a fortnight of stubborn price action below $26,000, traders are beginning to flock to lower liquidity trading pairs.

On Monday, Near Protocol's native token NEAR$1.0559 spiked by more than 20% after it signed a deal to use Alibaba's cloud services.

Arbitrum, meanwhile, has surged by 33.2% in the past 12-days as activity on the layer 2 blockchain continues to mount. Total value locked (TVL) on Arbitrum-based platforms like GMX and Radiant has increased by 12.5% and 9.3% in the past seven days, according to DefiLlama, as traders demonstrate an appetite to capture DeFi yields.

Open interest, which is a metric that assesses the amount of open derivatives positions on a specific asset, is resting at a yearly high on BCH$577.45 markets, suggesting that investors are backing the recent rally with leverage.