A wave of investor optimism led several altcoins—the crypto term for tokens that are not Bitcoin or Ethereum—to post big gains on Thursday following a stock market rally driven in part by the Federal Reserve raising rates a quarter of a percent.
The cryptocurrencies associated with the Polygon, Avalanche, and Aptos blockchains spiked more than 10% as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were up on Thursday morning.
Leading the pack was Avalanche’s token, AVAX, up about 16% in 24 hours to $22, according to CoinMarketCap. In recent weeks the company that created the Avalanche blockchain and token has made waves for partnering with Amazon Web Services. The partnership is supposed to make it easier to run and manage nodes on the network and make it more attractive for the developers.
The company also announced on Tuesday that Intain, a capital markets firm with $5.5 billion in assets, will be building on the blockchain, a sign of increasing institutional adoption for Avalanche.
MATIC, the cryptocurrency associated with the Polygon blockchain, saw a 14% increase to $1.24 over the past day as its NFT ecosystem sees strong growth.
The blockchain was able to steal away two of the top NFT collections on the Solana, y00ts and DeGods, in December thanks in part to a $3 million grant to the developers. While Ethereum has traditionally been the most popular blockchain for NFTs, Polygon has quickly made a name for itself in the space.
For the second straight month, the biggest secondary NFT marketplace, OpenSea, recorded more sales for Polygon-based NFTs than Ethereum-based NFTs. The marketplace sold 1.5 million Polygon NFTs, as opposed to 1.1 million Ethereum NFTs, Decrypt reported.
Polygon’s NFT trading volume skyrocketed 124% in January, reaching $46 million, according to a report by DappRadar.
Aptos’ token, APT, was the most profitable cryptocurrency for traders to invest in last month, according to CoinMarketCap. The crypto started the month at $3.50 and is up about 368% over the past 30 days, trading at about $18 on Thursday. The token is up 14% over the past 24 hours, riding the wave of the most recent rally.
The two most popular cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, on Thursday were up 3.6% to $23,800 and 6.3% to $1,600, respectively.
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