Following a several day period of relative stability in the cryptocurrency markets, Bitcoin has now risen nearly 4%, which is leading the overall crypto markets to surge. Today’s positive price move is being led by Ethereum, which is currently trading up well over 10%.

Today’s move marks the first market surge of 2019, although Bitcoin faces historical resistance around $4,000 which may prove to be a difficult level to break through.

Crypto Markets Add $7 Billion From Daily Lows

Today’s price surge has led the crypto markets to add over $7 billion to their aggregated market capitalization, which has risen from daily lows of $125 million to its current levels of nearly $133 billion.

Bitcoin is naturally leading the direction of the market and is currently trading up 4.4% at its current price of $3,900. This has been a relatively volatile week for Bitcoin’s price, which fell to lows of $3,600 before rising to highs of nearly $4,000.

During its last price rise, Bitcoin appeared to treat $4,000 as a level of resistance, as its price was swiftly pushed downwards after touching this level. More time is required to see if Bitcoin will be able to maintain its current upwards momentum and break above $4,000 during its current price surge.

Altcoins Surge, Ethereum Leads the Way

Bitcoin’s price rise has allowed the altcoin markets to see some decent gains, with Ethereum and EOS being today’s best performing cryptocurrencies so far.

At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading up 13% at its current price of $152. Ethereum is nearing its one-month highs of $156, which may act as a level of resistance. Ethereum is trading up 83% from its monthly lows of $83.

Ethereum’s massive price rise over the past month is the likely result of two primary factors, consisting of being in oversold territory earlier this month, and its upcoming Constantinople fork, which will reduce its block rewards and in turn decrease the new Ethereum supply.

Alex Krüger, an economist who focuses primarily on cryptocurrencies, linked Ethereum’s performance directly to this event, saying in a recent tweet that the supply reduction will be a bullish event.

“Notable outperformance of $ETH over $BTC in the last few weeks. There’s a reason for it: the upcoming fork / supply reduction. Another BAKKT delay adds to it,” he said.

In the past, Krüger has spoken bullishly about the Constantinople fork, which is set to occur around January 16th of this year, saying:

“Ethereum’s Constantinople fork is coming on block 7080000, around January 16, 2019. Constantinople will reduce the block rewards from 3 to 2, decreasing new $ETH supply accordingly… On the long run, this is decidedly bullish.”

Ethereum has now retaken the number two spot by market capitalization from XRP.

XRP is slightly outperforming Bitcoin and is trading up nearly 6% at its current price of $0.374.

EOS is also having a good day and is trading up over 10% at its current price of $2.84.

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