Did we witness the start of a new cryptocurrency rally on Monday? It's very possible. After all, the prices of more than a few coins and tokens across a wide variety of use cases zoomed notably higher, following a general softening in the preceding week.
Among the many altcoins making investors richer Monday were Toncoin (TON -2.13%), with an impressive gain of nearly 27% from its level at 4 p.m. ET the previous Friday, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH -3.70%), with a 21% improvement. A new partnership, meanwhile, juiced the prices of Immutable X (IMX -0.10%) and OKB (CRYPTO:OKB), both of which rose by about 14%.
The leader bounces back
Much of this derived from the path blazed by the original cryptocurrency, and the asset that remains the industry's near-indisputable leader, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC). The coin had a rocky price trajectory last week due in no small part to outflows from spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
These days, though, many crypto bulls are ready to pounce on even a minor indication of price weakness, and as this trading week kicked off they piled back into Bitcoin. As of late Friday afternoon, it had crossed over the $70,000 barrier and seemed to be staying there. The broader investing world always notices when the crypto hits one of these psychological mileposts, and this bolsters support for the new level.
If market participants are bullish on Bitcoin, you can bet your last piece of digital currency that they're optimistic about the future of altcoins, too. Since altcoins work on similar principles to Bitcoin, as we've seen in so many instances they tend to ride along with their leader on the way up. This helps explain the rocket that was Bitcoin Cash (a hard fork of Bitcoin) and the robust performance of blockchain integration platform token Toncoin.
The power of crypto partnerships
Of course, it's also a factor in the pleasant jumps experienced by Immutable X and OKB; however, in the case of those two cryptos some proprietary news was also a factor.
In a blog post updated on Friday OKX -- the crypto exchange operator that uses OKB as its native token -- announced it was teaming up with Immutable, which it hypes as "the leading Web3 gaming platform." The partnership will see the integration of certain Immutable offerings into OKX's marketplace and platform. These include a non-fungible token (NFT) "launchpad," OKX wrote.
If done well and managed effectively, such a tie-up could mutually benefit both parties, as OKX is an exchange and Immutable operates a platform well-known in various crypto circles. Expanding the user base is crucial for any crypto project that needs/wants to achieve scale, so it's understandable that investors traded up both cryptocurrencies on the news.