Cryptocurrency Prices Today: Bitcoin, Ethereum clock gains

Bitcoin (Representative image)

The global cryptocurrency market capitalisation rose 2.11 percent over the last 24 hours to $1.73 trillion, while trading volumes rose 23.83 percent to $85.36 billion during the period.

The total volume in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space stood at $12.83 billion, around 15.02 percent of the 24-hour cryptocurrency trading volume. The total volume in stablecoins stood at $72.04 billion, around 84.40 percent of the 24-hour cryptocurrency trading volume.

Bitcoin's market dominance was up 0.13 percent to 42.39 percent and the currency was trading at $38,635.59 on the morning of March 8.

In rupee terms, Bitcoin rose 2.65 percent to trade at Rs 30,83,278 while Ethereum jumped about 1.47 percent to Rs 2,03,000

Cardano was up 0.02 percent to Rs 64.51 and Avalanche jumped 3.71 percent to Rs 5,859.6. Polkadot was up 1.82 percent to Rs 1,323.72 and Litecoin rose 1.74 percent to Rs 8,008.73  in the last 24 hours. Tether was down 0.13 percent to Rs 79.64

Memecoin SHIB rose 0.81 percent, while Dogecoin was up by 0.01 percent to trade at Rs 9.48. Terra (LUNA) rose 1.51 percent to Rs 6,350.06

In other news, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak lauded Bitcoin's underlying mechanics in a recent interview, describing the cryptocurrency as being "the only one that's pure-gold mathematics."

Wozniak has long been an advocate of Bitcoin; in an interview last year as well, he described the world's favorite cryptocurrency as a "mathematical miracle," and while speaking to Yahoo Finance, he hailed its "mathematical purity" alongside the fact that it "can't be modified easily with humans in control of it," unlike the U.S. dollar.

However, Wozniak had fewer glowing words for NFTs and the wider cryptocurrency space, describing it as being "so up in the air" and pointing to a track record of "rip-offs" in an over-saturated market.

Separately, Immutable, the Australian startup behind an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution designed for games and NFTs, announced today that it has raised a Series C funding round at a valuation of $2.5 billion. The firm joins an ever-expanding list of crypto “unicorns,” or startups worth at least $1 billion.

The $200 million round was led by investment firm Temasek, with participation from Chinese gaming giant Tencent and leading metaverse investment firm Animoca Brands. Additional new investors include Arrington Capital, Mirae Asset, and Liberty Global, while Alameda Research and Possible Ventures are among the firms that increased their total investment.

As of 9:00 am, these were the prices of various cryptocurrencies in the Indian market (Data from WazirX)