Markets: Bitcoin holds gains; Ether, Avalanche surge; Solana jumps

Bitcoin and Ether added to morning gains in Tuesday afternoon trading in Asia, as most other top 10 coins by market capitalization also rose. Avalanche rebounded after a slump over the weekend following whistleblower allegations that the company paid a law firm to stage litigations and class-action lawsuits against its rivals.

See related article: Markets: Bitcoin back above US$20,000; Ether, Ether Classic jump ahead of merge

Fast facts

• Bitcoin traded up 2.8% in the past 24 hours to US$20,444 as of 4 p.m. in Hong Kong. Ether surged 9.21% to change hands at US$1,587, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

• Ethereum Classic, the token on the original chain from which Ether was forked, gained 8.77% with both benefiting from the buzz surrounding Ethereum’s highly-anticipated blockchain “Merge” next month.

• Avalanche jumped 12.85% to US$20.33, after it dropped as low as US$17.56 on Monday. Crypto Leaks on Friday alleged Ava Labs, the firm behind the blockchain, paid law firm Roche Freedman to collect confidential information on rival companies to attack them with class-action lawsuits.

• Kyle Roche, founding partner of Roche Freedman, said in a statement on Monday that the Crypto Leaks report “contains numerous unsourced false statements and illegally obtained, highly edited video clips that are not presented with accurate context.”

• Solana, the biggest gainer after Ethereum among CoinMarketCap’s top 10, rose 7.24% to trade at US$32.77. Cardano added 4.74%, and BNB climbed 4.59%.

• Asia equity markets had a mixed day. The Nikkei 225 index closed up 1.14%. The Shanghai Composite index lost 0.42%, and the Hong Kong Hang Seng index edged down 0.37%.

See related article: FTX CEO: no plan to buy crypto exchange Huobi