Following its roughly 15% move ahead over the past 72 hours, bitcoin is little changed Wednesday at $44,000. The speculative juices are flowing though, with a number of altcoins moving sharply higher.

Among the leaders is Avalanche’s AVAX token, whose 17% gain on Wednesday makes it the leader among those cryptocurrencies with a market value above $1 billion. This comes following the token's near-doubling in price in November.

Another big mover is Helium, the crypto connectivity project that migrated from its own blockchain to layer-1 Solana last year. It's higher by 42% on the day after the company announced it launched a mobile phone plan in the U.S. with unlimited data, texts and calls for $20 a month.

Memecoins are moving too, led by dogecoin [DOGE], which is ahead 11% over the past 24 hours to rise past $0.10 for the first time since April.

“The [bitcoin] rally has been quite extraordinary even by bitcoin's standards and highlights how excited the community is by the prospect of an ETF approval,” said Craig Erlam, a senior analyst at OANDA. Erlam said that lower interest rate expectations have also helped the cryptocurrency’s rise but he thinks the ETF hype is the primary driver.

Altcoins Helium Avalanche

Lyllah Ledesma

Lyllah Ledesma is a CoinDesk Markets reporter currently based in Europe. She holds a master's degree from New York University in Business and Economics and an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of East Anglia. Lyllah holds bitcoin, ether and small amounts of other crypto assets.