First Mover Americas: Ether Steals the Show, Alts Follow Suit

Ether (ETH) continues to outperform bitcoin (BTC) following the Ethereum network’s Shanghai upgrade, which has proven to be bullish for much of the cryptocurrency market, with many altcoins following suit. Ether is up 6% on the day vs. bitcoin which gained 1%. Bitcoin did briefly cross $31,000 on Friday for the first time since June 2022, marking a 10% gain over the last 7 days. Ether rose 13% over the same time frame. Arbitrum (ARB) an Ethereum scaling solution, led gains this week, rising almost 30%. According to Sheraz Ahmed, STORM’s managing partner, ARB is bouncing back from the overselling caused by its airdrop in March, which saw the Ethereum layer 2 distribute its long-awaited governance token to community members. The airdrop, however, was plagued with bugs and phishing scams. “The crypto markets are heavily emotionally driven, and we often see overbought/sold tokens based on over-reactions,” said Ahmed.