Market Wrap: Bitcoin Passes $10.7K; Ethereum Gas Usage Hits Record September Highs

Bitcoin is making gains Monday and Ethereum usage is hitting record highs in September.

Bitcoin trading around $10,669 as of 20:00 UTC. Gaining 3.4% over the previous 24 hours.

The price of bitcoin hit as high as $10,759 on spot exchanges such as Coinbase Monday.

Buy liquidations, the crypto equivalent of a margin call that wipes out short-sellers on derivatives exchanges such as BitMEX seemed to be helping to push bitcoin's price up.

In the options market, some traders remained highly bullish that bitcoin can hit new highs.

"While bitcoin price dabbles around $10,000 now, traders have still priced in a chance that bitcoin will trade at $20,000 by March 2021," said William Purdy, an options trader and founder of analysis firm PurdyAlerts.

Based on how options are currently trading in the market, it appears as if options traders are estimating a 10% chance that bitcoin will be at $20,000 by the March 2021 expiration date.

Lau said a higher bitcoin price could mean an increase in futures interest.

Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Monday, trading around $375 and climbing 3.2% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC.The total amount of "Gas" used on the Ethereum network to send transactions and interact with decentralized finance protocols hit new highs in September.

On Sept. 6, a record 80 billion units of gas was used on the network, and Friday was the second-highest usage day ever, at 79,743,954,147 units used.