Crypto market update: institutional investors propel bitcoin
The likes of Bank of America and US Bank brought BTC price to a 3-month high

Bitcoin price bounced back above $55,000 (£40,367) today, 8 October, following an increasing acceptance of cryptocurrencies in the overall financial industry.
The likes of Bank of America, which recently launched its digital asset research providing an investment framework for the digital asset landscape, and US Bank, which announced the first crypto sub-custodian in the bank’s network of providers, brought the price of the lead crypto to its highest peak in the last three months.
On the other hand, the low price levels witnessed in September meant miners retained several BTC coins, driving its price up. For example, Riot Blockchain recently announced a holding of 3,534 BTC as of 30 September, up from approximately 3,128 BTC at the end of August.
According to Currency.com, bitcoin’s price was trading higher at $55,855.61 during the last 24 hours. The largest cryptocurrency for market capitalisation was about 2.5% higher at 10:00 BST (UTC -1) – and was also up 24% in the last seven days. The market cap of BTC was about $1.05trn, representing around 42% of the crypto market capitalisation. The crypto’s trading volume was approximately 20% lower at $38bn in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the total crypto market capitalisation rose by about $32bn from $2.313trn to $2.345trn in the past 24 hours.
Ethereum approaching the Altair upgrade
As Ethereum (ETH) gets closer to the Merge or the ETH2.0 upgrade, with the Altair beacon chain upgrade announced to be ready to be activated on the Ethereum mainnet and the upgrade going live at epoch 74240 (27 October, 10:56:23am UTC), the price of the so-called digital silver rose to $3,634.50 today, in line with other major cryptos.
Since London Hard Fork, the network has burned around $1.7bn in ETH, indicating a net reduction of 55.2%. ETH price remains well below the $4.000 resistance level with transactions fees still high.
According to BitinfoCharts.com data, ETH average transaction fee was around $36.4 today or ETH0.01, after having touched a $46 level during the week.
Ether was trading up by 2.7% with a market capitalisation of $428.6bn. The cryptocurrency’s trading volume was about 19% lower at $18.1bn in the past 24 hours.
Binance Coin the third crypto by market-cap
Binance Coin (BNB) became the third largest crypto currency with a market-cap of $73,6bn, surpassing Cardano (ADA) at $73.3bn at the time of writing.
BNB was trading lower by 1.2% at $437.56 with a trading volume of $1.8bn, down by 15.6% in the past 24 hours.
On the other hand, ADA was trading lower by 1.1% at $2.28, with a trading volume of $2.6bn, down by 25.8% in the past 24 hours.
Top gainers and losers
Elsewhere, the likes of Fantom (FTM), Qtum (QTUM) and Harmony (ONE) witnessed more than 24% increases in their price.
On the opposite side of the coin was SHIBA INU (SHIB) after profit-taking sales drove its price to $0.00002177. SHIB was trading lower by 28%.36 after a whopping 196% gain in the last 7 days.
All prices are correct as of 10:00 BST (UTC -1).
Further reading: Shiba Inu coin price prediction: Is it the next DOGE?