Bitcoin prices rose on Monday morning in Asia to above US$27,000 amid higher transaction fees due to congestion on the network. Ether managed to rise above the US$1,800 support level while its blockchain developers say they have added updates to fix what caused last week’s performance issues. Litecoin led the gainers amongst other top 10 non-stable coin cryptocurrencies. U.S. equity futures edged down on Friday as U.S. investors fear a possible debt default. Over the weekend, the world’s largest cryptocurrency recorded a 2-month low, falling to US$25,964 on Saturday. The token has been experiencing network congestion with the popularity of Bitcoin Ordinals and new BRC-20 memecoins Pepe and Floki, driving up transaction costs. Ether edged up 0.69% to US$1,809, maintaining the key US$1,800 support level, but down 3.54% over the past seven days.
The Ethereum blockchain experienced technical issues twice on May 11 and 12 that caused the network to halt finalizing blocks, concerning users of the blockchain’s performance stability. On Saturday, Ethereum blockchain consultant Superphiz said on Twitter that the issue — which “appears to have been caused by a high load on some Consensus Layers clients, which in turn was caused by an exceptional scenario“ — had been resolved. Ethereum developers deployed updates in response to the tech problem, Superphiz confirmed.
All other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded higher on Monday morning. Litecoin led the gains, adding 3.97% to US$83.50. The Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency faced a surge in interest due to the higher transaction fees affecting the world’s most dominant digital currency. Litecoin is also having its quadrennial block halving event on Aug. 3. Halving refers to a pre-programmed reduction of the rate at which new tokens are created, which reduces supply and can drive prices higher. The total crypto market capitalization rose 0.43% in the past 24 hours to US$1.13 trillion. The total trading volume dropped 3.02% to US$22.07 billion.