The cryptocurrency market has been back on the move since before the weekend.

The overall crypto market cap is gradually climbing towards a $2.6 trillion all-time high from mid-May as it surges past $2.2 trillion on Monday.

This past week, the biggest contribution to this growth was made by Avalanche (AVAX), which rallied 160%. Audius (AUDIO), Arweave (AR), Near (NEAR), Fantom (FTM), Terra (LUNA), Thorchain (RUNE), Cosmos (ATOM), Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Kusama (KSM), PancakeSwap (CAKE), and BNB recorded between 20% to 80% uptrend in the last 7-days.

As for the leading cryptocurrency, after falling just under $44,000, the price of Bitcoin went on to hit $50,000 late on Sunday or early Monday. BTC went as high as $50,600, a level that was last seen on May 15.

This breakout is “coinciding with the biggest increase in development activity… also since May,” noted analytics company Santiment. “If Github submissions continue pushing higher here, it will be a promising sign.”

All the while, the funding rate on Bitcoin perpetual contracts remains subdued, with the highest at 0.0497% on OKEx. On Bybit, for USDT margin contracts, the funding is actually negative at 0.0347%.

Open interest on Bitcoin futures, on the other hand, is currently at $18.25 billion — adding $7.63 billion since June 26 low but still needs about $10.5 billion to hit the mid-April peak of $27.68 billion.

Funding and topside vols both low as we sit under $50k. FYI

— CM (@ConvexMonster) August 23, 2021

On CME, the OI is only at $1.75 billion, up from $1.11 bln low in July and still far off from $3.26 bln in late Feb., according to Bybt.

This is unlike Ether futures, where OI had climbed to a new peak at $682.68 million and has been on an uptrend since July 20, when it was at $292.58 million. First introduced in early February on CME, the OI on Ether futures was just under $608 million when it topped out mid-May.

“CME futures suggest that a bullish sentiment towards ETH is brewing among institutional investors,” noted Arcane Research.

Overall, OI for Ether futures keeps above $9 billion, adding $4.58 billion in the last two months and needing $2.6 billion to reach $11.6 billion ATH from May 10th.

As for price, Ether has gone past $3,365 for the first time since May 19. ETHBTC, however, has taken a drop to 0.065 as Bitcoin started rallying. Now the first resistance for ETHBTC is around 0.068, then around 0.070, and then above 0.077.

Working in Ether’s favor is that the percentage of ETH held by the exchanges has dropped to just 12.8%, the lowest in the past three years. Meanwhile, more than 7 million ETH are staked on ETH 2.0 and an almost record 9.7 million in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Adding to this supply crunch, 78,000 ETH worth roughly $245 million has been burned in less than 20 days since the activation of EIP 1559 with the London upgrade earlier this month.

With NFT marketplace OpenSea accounting for close to 10k ETH burns, non-fungible token mania is the biggest contributor to this rapid number of ETH moving out of circulation.

“NFTs may be one of the largest catalysts we’ve seen for ETH since the creation of DeFi,” noted Ethereum enthusiast Croissant. “They can bring both liquidity & value to previously intangible assets.”

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