Bitcoin surges to a 5-month high above $57,000, outperforming wider crypto sector

• Bitcoin surged to a five-month high on Monday, climbing back above $57,000 to outperform the broader crypto sector.
• The wider altcoin market is down overall, with ripple, cardano, polkadot, and dogecoin trading lower.
• Elsewhere, dogecoin spinoff shiba inu rallied 19% on Monday, gaining 265% over the past seven days.
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Bitcoin surged to a five-month high on Monday, climbing back above $57,000 to outperform the broader cryptocurrency sector.

The digital currency claimed an intraday high of $57,776 before paring gains to trade up 3.48% at $57,331 as of 12:50 p.m. ET Monday. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization hit an all-time high of $65,000 in April.

Tim Frost, CEO of digital wealth management platform Yield App, couldn’t point to one particular reason behind the rally. Possible catalysts include the SEC’s recent approval of an exchange-traded fund comprised of stocks with bitcoin exposure, growing institutional adoption for the digital asset, or the daily settlement hitting $31 billion worth of transactions for the first time last week, he said.

But bitcoin could be setting up for another short-term dip. “Analysts are predicting a potential cool off, with bitcoin potentially falling to the $40,000 support level before continuing on the upwards trajectory to test the previous all-time high,” Frost said in a note.

Technical analysis by Adam James, senior analyst at cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, showed bitcoin’s four-hour ribbon of exponential moving averages is providing support. But he said the deeply negative Grayscale Bitcoin Trust premium for Grayscale’s banner product may hinder the sustainability of this rally.

Meanwhile, the wider altcoin market is down overall, with ripple, cardano, polkadot, and dogecoin trading lower. But ether and stellar are both exhibiting modest gains.

Also bucking the general downturn is shiba inu, which is trading 19% higher on Monday to $0.00003212. In the last seven days, the dogecoin spinoff has climbed a dizzying 265%.

The token was founded in 2020, with its anonymous creator dubbing it a “meme token” and explicitly mimicked dogecoin.

“Shiba inu is a ridiculous meme coin of a ridiculous meme coin that most investors and indeed average people balk at,” Frost told Insider. “The price seems to be on the rise now following a huge dump on Thursday when a lot of whales decided to offload onto the market.”