After weeks and weeks of failing under $17,000, bitcoin finally initiated an impressive leg up that took it well beyond that line.

The alternative coins have also posted notable gains on a daily scale, led by Cardano, Solana, ApeCoin, and ATOM.

Bitcoin Back Above $17K

The start of the year brought some minor positivity to the BTC bulls as the asset overcame $16,500 and added a few hundred dollars in the first few days. The trend continued until it faced $17,000 on Wednesday and Friday. Both attempts were followed by rejections that pushed bitcoin south.

The weekend was calmer as BTC had recovered some ground and stood inches away from $17,000. The bulls finally have something to cheer for as of now, as bitcoin broke above this coveted level hours ago.

The leg-up pushed the cryptocurrency to a four-week high of just over $17,250. This has pushed BTC’s market capitalization to a local peak of above $330 billion.

However, bitcoin’s dominance over the altcoins has taken a serious hit and is down to 39.1%, as most of them have outperformed it in the past 24 hours.

SOL, ADA Shoot Up

The alternative coins were untypically stagnant in the past few weeks as well, apart from a few exceptions. Today, though, the landscape is entirely different.

The two larger-cap alts at the forefront of the market run are Solana and Cardano. The former has been performing rather well since the start of the year, and a 21% surge in the past 24 hours alone has taken it to a local high of over $16.

Cardano, on the other hand, has soared by 17%, charting a two-month high of over $0.34 hours ago.

A 4% increase has helped Ethereum to reclaim $1,300 for the first time in several weeks. Binance Coin is up by 6% and is north of $275. Ripple, Dogecoin, Polygon, OKB, Litecoin, Polkadot, and Shiba Inu are also well in the green.

With the rest of the lower- and mid-cap alts posting impressive gains, the cumulative market cap of all crypto assets has added $20 billion in a day and is up to $850 billion.