Ethereum Token BAT Continues Breakneck Rally, up 56% This Week

[Magician]

Ethereum token BAT continued its dramatic week-long ascent on Monday, bolstered by positive fundamentals related to its role in Brave’s web browser ecosystem and speculation that the cryptocurrency will soon be listed on Coinbase.

BAT (short for Basic Attention Token) increased 14 percent against the dollar on Monday, briefly eclipsing $0.30 before settling down to a current value of $0.287. The token’s weekly return now stands at 56 percent, which is far and away the best return among top 50 cryptocurrency assets.

BAT/USD | Binance

As CCN reported, the rally may be partially connected to the recent overhaul of Brave’s desktop browser, which gave BAT a more central role on the platform and also advanced the cryptocurrency rewards program into beta.

Another popular theory is that BAT, one of five cryptocurrencies that Coinbase explicitly said it was “exploring” adding to its cryptocurrency exchange and/or brokerage service, is surging on speculation that it will be listed on the platform soon. Coinbase added the first of those five cryptocurrencies, 0x (ZRX), on its order-book exchange earlier this month, and the listing catalyzed a phenomenal ZRX price rally.

Each of the remaining for cryptocurrencies — BAT, cardano (ADA), stellar (XLM), and zcash (ZEC) — has outperformed the wider altcoin market during the past week. However, none of these coins has managed to climb more than 8 percent, much less the 56 percent gain seen by BAT. That may have something to do with the vast differences in the market caps of these cryptocurrencies.

Even after this week’s breakneck rally, BAT ranks just 31st in total market cap with a circulating valuation of $281 million, while the remaining three coins all rank inside the top 20, and two of them — cardano and stellar — rank inside the top 10. Consequently, the “Coinbase bounce” could have an outsized effect on BAT versus the others.

Moreover, the fact that Coinbase recently listed 0x, which — like BAT — is an Ethereum token programmed to the ERC-20 standard, could have speculators believing that BAT has fewer barriers to a Coinbase listing than the other three higher-priced coins.

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