The crypto market is witnessing a fascinating resurgence in volatility, driven by a blend of established leader projects and the emerging protocols that are capturing the attention of investors. The current list of Top Gainers by CoinMarketCap is dominated by assets that seem to have broken out of the general market consolidation phase and are recorded in double-digits over a 24-hour time frame. This rotation underscores a shifting capital flow wherein the traders are leaving behind the stagnant majors and into the high-beta assets that have catalysts or technical breakouts.

In a surprising turn of events, DASH, which has been a veteran privacy-focused digital currency, has become the number one of the top 100 cryptocurrencies in performance. Dash increased by a massive 41.16% to a price of $72.30. The enormous 24-hour trading volume of over $1.22 billion behind this rally signals that there is a massive amount of institutional or “whale” activity involved.

Dash has recently shown renewed interest in older networks that have sometimes been overlooked by newer DeFi protocols, as well as providing meaningful utility for transactional privacy and speed.

Following right behind is Story Protocol (IP) which has gained 28.73% to exchange at $3.88. The emergence of Story Protocol is an indicator of the increasing convergence of blockchain and intellectual property administration, a niche of which is finding many takers as creators discover decentralized methods of promoting their output.

At the same time, infrastructure plays are exhibiting strength, as Internet Computer (ICP) had an increase of 18.78% reaching $3.84 with a volume of $321 million. Optimism (OP), one of the top Layer-2 scaling solutions for Ethereum, also experienced a healthy growth of 12.88% and traded at $0.3615. This trend in ICP and OP indicates that investors believe that the ecosystem can continue to scale in the long term, particularly due to the emphasis of expansion in rollup shown in Ethereum roadmap.

The speculative wing of the market remains healthy, as seen by Pump.fun (PUMP) and Pepe (PEPE). Pump.fun pulled off a 12.01% gain, and popular meme coin Pepe gained 11.62%, a massive liquidity profile with over $1.12 billion in daily volume.

The fact that meme coins are still selling in the top gainers list indicates that retail sentiment is high. As Coindesk analysis on market trends argued, large volume in meme assets is the usual indication of a larger market change and is a signal of general risk appetite in the retail trader.

This market snapshot today hints that there is a good mix of basic growth and speculative frenzy. From Dash’s humongous breakout to the steady rise in the tokens of infrastructure, like Optimism, it seems that liquidity is starting to move more freely across different parts of the crypto economy. As the global market cap is more around $3.24 Trillion, these gainers seem to be the current “hot spots” where movement is likely to continue in the short-term. Investors however should stay wary since typically; high volume spikes are followed by periods of cooling and consolidation.

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