Blur, Arbitrum Lead Altcoin Surge as Traders Anticipate Bull Run

Key takeaways

• BLUR has risen by 22% in the past 24-hours after being listed on South Korean exchange Upbit.
• Trading volume across numerous altcoins has increased significantly.
• Open interest is at record highs for several altcoins.

A series of decentralized finance and NFT-related altcoins have posted double-digit gains over the past week as capital begins to flow from larger assets like bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) to more speculative tokens like blur (BLUR) and arbitrum (ARB).

Over the past 24-hours Blur, which is the native token of its namesake's NFT exchange, has risen by more than 22% after it was listed on South Korean trading platform Upbit.

The move coincided with a notable spike in trading volume, with $241 million being racked up in the past 24-hours - a 1,240% increase on the previous day, according to CoinmarketCap data.

The magnitude of the rally represents a shift in sentiment from three weeks ago when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went on the offensive against altcoins that it labelled securities.

With Bitcoin trading comfortably above $30,000 following a fortnight of stubborn price action below $26,000, traders are beginning to flock to lower liquidity trading pairs.

On Monday, Near Protocol's native token (NEAR) spiked by more than 20% after it signed a deal to use Alibaba's cloud services.

Arbitrum, meanwhile, has surged by 33.2% in the past 12-days as activity on the layer 2 blockchain continues to mount. Total value locked (TVL) on Arbitrum-based platforms like GMX and Radiant has increased by 12.5% and 9.3% in the past seven days, according to DefiLlama, as traders demonstrate an appetite to capture DeFi yields.

Open interest, which is a metric that assesses the amount of open derivatives positions on a specific asset, is resting at a yearly high on bitcoin cash (BCH) markets, suggesting that investors are backing the recent rally with leverage.