Bitcoin Nears $70K and Altcoins Finally Remember to Show Up

Bitcoin's start-of-the-month rally has pushed it close to $70,000, with altcoins and the broader crypto market following suit. Algorand, Stable and Morpho have taken the top spots, notching 23%, 17% and 13% gains over the past 24 hours respectively, according to data from price aggregator CoinGecko. Other tokens including Provenance Blockchain, Jupiter and Render have achieved gains of over 5% in the past day. Looks like the alts finally woke up from their winter hibernation—someone must've slipped them the degen juice again.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has grown 2.7% in the past 24 hours to hit $2.44 trillion, with over $326 million in positions liquidated according to CoinGlass data. That's $326 million in leveraged positions going poof—just another day in crypto where fortunes are made and lost before your morning coffee gets cold.

"What we're seeing at the start of April isn't really a repeatable calendar rally, but more a positioning reset," Wenny Cai, Founder and CEO of decentralized derivatives exchange SynFutures, told Decrypt. "After weeks of cautious sentiment and under-allocation, capital is starting to rotate back into higher-beta assets, especially altcoins." Basically, the smart money got bored holding stablecoins earning 4% and decided to YOLO back into the chaotic world of 80% drawdowns.

Volatility like that happens around the "turn of a new month or quarter, when portfolios get rebalanced, and traders put risk back on," Cai explained. It's the financial equivalent of New Year's resolutions, but for degens—and just as likely to fail by February.

Bitcoin has reacted appropriately, ending its five-month losing streak by closing March at a 1.81% gain. Over the past 24 hours, it reached an intraday high of $69,135 before retracing to around $68,690, up 3.1% on the day. BTC finally decided to stop bleeding and remembered it's supposed to go up sometimes—groundbreaking stuff.

From a geopolitical standpoint, U.S. President Donald Trump's de-escalation messages over the past week, including Tuesday's announcement involving the U.S. potentially withdrawing from Iran in the next "two to three weeks," according to a BBC report, have also played a pivotal role in triggering a risk-on rally across the broader financial markets. Nothing says "buy the dip" quite than geopolitical tension easing—turns out war is bad for business, who knew?

Despite the easing geopolitical outlook, experts said Bitcoin's structure remains weak. "We're still operating in a period of elevated instability, and that's unlikely to change quickly," Georgii Verbitskii, founder of crypto investor app TYMIO, told Decrypt. "Even if there is some de-escalation, the situation around key trade routes like the Strait of Hormuz is complex and could remain a source of uncertainty for a prolonged period." So basically, buckle up buttercups—it's going to be a bumpy ride.

That could leave markets at the behest of geopolitical headlines. Users on prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, remain skeptical of Trump's de-escalation talk, putting a 55% chance on U.S. boots on the ground before May. The betting degens aren't buying the peace pipe—55% probability of military involvement is basically a coin flip, which in crypto terms means definitely happening