A series of decentralized finance and NFT-related altcoins have posted double-digit gains over the past week as investors move capital away from larger assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) and into more speculative tokens like Blur (BLUR) and Arbitrum (ARB).
The surge in altcoins was highlighted by Blur’s 22% increase in the past 24 hours after it was listed on South Korean trading platform Upbit. This was accompanied by a 1,240% increase in trading volume, with $241 million being racked up in the same period, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The rally comes after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went on the offensive against altcoins that it labelled securities three weeks ago. Now, with Bitcoin trading comfortably above $30,000, traders are beginning to flock to lower liquidity trading pairs.
Near Protocol’s native token (NEAR) spiked by more than 20% on Monday 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.
Open interest is also at a yearly high on Bitcoin Cash (BCH) markets, suggesting that investors are backing the recent rally with leverage.