Bitcoin is back around $65,500 after falling to about $62,300 ahead of the weekend. The weakness in the second half of the last week came after BTC hit a new all-time high at just above $69,000.

In tandem with Bitcoin, altcoins are also seeing some green now, as a result, the total crypto market cap is back above $3 trillion, after the fall below this mark on Wednesday.

The biggest winners in the past week have been Loopring (100%), Livepeer (89%), Crypto.com (39%), and Litecoin (35%), while SPELL Token and Crypto.com are leading in the past 24 hours with 20% gains.

Ether meanwhile is also back above $4,700, steadily uptrending since September when it traded between $3,200 and $2,800. Compared to Bitcoin’s 123% YTD gains, Ether is up 550% this year so far.

According to Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific with crypto exchange Luno, Ether has consolidated in the last few days. “You’re going to see Ether and the altcoin market move faster than Bitcoin in the interim,” he said.

However, technical indicators suggest a pause in the rally. As per Fibonacci ratios, which are used to identify market reversals, the scope of Ether’s most recent rally is about the same as a June to September surge that subsequently ended, and we may see a similar pullback this time as well.

Another indicator, DeMark, is also flashing red with $5k as the key level to watch for, which implies unexpected Ether strength.

Cryptocurrency prices may have taken a breather, but the money hasn’t stopped flowing into the market, and according to Steve Kurz, the global head of asset management at crypto asset manager Galaxy Digital, a growing interest is also seen in cryptos among big institutional investors like pension and endowment funds.

Kurz describes Bitcoin as digital gold, Ethereum as Web 3.0, and decentralized finance (DeFi) as an entire construct.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Kurz said pension funds, endowments, and sovereign-wealth funds “believe in the crypto future” and Web 3.0, but do not know how to start.

“So it was a real pain-point for large institutions to access this more active body of the asset class,” leading Galaxy to both provide education tools and access to the asset class.

When discussing the climate among institutional investors and what kind of allocations they are thinking about, Galaxy is focusing on indexing first because these institutional allocators, that is, “a $100 trillion-plus market globally,” requires a number of necessary structural impediments to doing anything different in place.

Kurz further explained that between the period of time when crypto was down 95% to today, a lot was happening behind the scenes in the form of conversations, developing product structures, and working on valuation frameworks “so that when you came out of this, and the world exploded and had a catalyst for crypto to really matter — which is Covid — you’re not starting from zero.”

“Every single institution that you can think of in every vertical, they have people who have done work on this. It’s been socialized with their committees, and they’re much further along than you would expect.”

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