Double Digit Weekly Gains for Bitcoin and Ethereum Send BTC Over $22,000

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has risen more than 12% over the past seven days. The leading cryptocurrency has since clawed back $22,000 at press time, a figure not seen since August.

Over the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency has jumped a little over 2.6% and is trading hands at around $22,235, according to CoinMarketCap.

Despite the tame rally over the past day, Bitcoin trading volumes have risen by more than 20%. Important markets on Binance, FTX exchangeand Coin base has hosted a majority of this trade.

The brunt of Bitcoin’s weekly price rally began on September 7, when the cryptocurrency rose from $18,661. From this low to today’s price marks a massive increase of over 18%.

Ethereum has had an equally bullish rally over the past week, jumping from about $1,562 to today’s price of around $1,755. However, over the past 24 hours, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has fallen by approximately 0.4%.

Like Bitcoin, the majority of Ethereum’s 12% gain came since last Monday, September 7, when the asset rose from just over $1,500.

The bullish momentum in both assets remains tempered by the fact that both Bitcoin and Ethereum are still down more than 60% since their all-time highs set last November.

At that time, Bitcoin peaked at $68,789 and Ethereum reached $4,891.

What drives Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Bitcoin’s recent rally comes amid a string of relatively bullish headlines. Perhaps most notable is Tonga’s plans to make Bitcoin legal tender in October.

Lord Fusitu’a, a former member of parliament in the Polynesian state, responded to questions about making the leading cryptocurrency legal tender by saying that “it is actually planned for the end of next month.”

Elsewhere, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler recently supported plans to give the CFTC regulatory control over Bitcoin, calling it a commodity and not a security (and thus not under the SEC’s jurisdiction). However, Gensler did not mention the regulatory status of Ethereum.

Despite that, Ethereum has continued to rally ahead of its long-awaited upgrade this week. Called merging, the event will transfer the network from one proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a proof of effort (PoS) system.

The shift is expected to increase the network’s efficiency by 99.95%according to the Ethereum Foundation.

According to block tracker Wen Mergethe event is scheduled to take place on September 14.