FX.co ★ Bitcoin rises sharply and crypto investors buy lesser-known altcoins

On Tuesday, Bitcoin soared by 5% overnight and jumped above $44,000. According to CoinGecko, the world's largest aggregator of digital asset data, the capitalization of the flagship virtual asset rose to $833 billion in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin's main competitor, Ethereum, followed the trend of the crypto market's leader and rose by 6.73% to $3,112 in 24 hours.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $44,168.

At the end of last week, BTC rose to January's high of $45,800. Since then, the main cryptocurrency has been recovering from January's collapse to a low of $32,900 last seen in summer of 2021.

Experts say the main reason for the strong growth of the cryptocurrency market and other risky assets is the weakening of geopolitical tensions between Ukraine and Russia.

On Tuesday, the market surged amid the Russian Defense Ministry's announcement that the Russian Armed Forces had returned from the exercises to their permanent home bases. At the end of last week, the White House said that Russian troops were concentrated on the border with Ukraine and claimed that Russia was preparing an invasion.

Since the beginning of 2021, the crypto market has been showing high correlation with other risky assets, in particular - with securities. Thus, due to the decline of global stock markets on Monday, Bitcoin also plummeted significantly, despite the high oscillation of quotations throughout the trading sessions. According to analysts of the crypto market, this situation occurs due to the growing institutionalization of the sector.

At the same time, many crypto-experts still perceive digital assets as a safe haven that can preserve its value in times of high volatility.

By the way, last week institutional investors, while continuing to invest in BTC and Ethereum, began to actively invest in little-known altcoins. Thus, Terra, Tezos and Cosmos tokens were among the favorites of the cryptocurrency market. As a result, traders invested $2.2 million, $0.9 million and $0.6 million in the above-mentioned assets, respectively. The cryptocurrency market added $75 million thanks to large institutional investors.

The highest share of $25 million was invested in BTC, while the leading altcoin - Ethereum - unexpectedly received $21 million from institutional investors, thus interrupting a two-month period of capital outflow.