Cosmos Back Above $30 After 19% Rally

ATOM is up 19% today. 

Cosmos Returns to $30 

A sluggish Bitcoin doesn’t always mean weak price action across the rest of the market. 

Cosmos’ ATOM token is up 19% in the last 24 hours, defying a lack of momentum among leading assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance Coin. According to data from CoinGecko, it’s currently trading at $31.04 following a relatively slow week of market activity for the asset. 

Cosmos has suffered relative to many other crypto assets in recent weeks. Since hitting an all-time high of $44.42 in September, it’s consistently failed to break out of resistance while the likes of Avalanche, Solana, and Ethereum have posted record highs. 

Cosmos is setting out to become the “Internet of blockchains.” It connects individual neworks and offers interoperability between chains via the IBC Protocol. Terra, THORChain, and Secret Network all use Cosmos’ own software development kit and can connect with one another via the IBC Protocol. 

Cosmos is sometimes referred to as a Layer 0 network, but it’s also discussed in tandem with Layer 1 blockchains. The crypto market has seen a boom in Layer 1 networks this year amid growing competition between Ethereum and other smart contract networks. The second-ranked blockchain, which is currently the main hub for the emergent DeFi and NFT sectors, saw its ETH currency rally during the first half of the year, helped by the launch of a crucial fee burning proposal called EIP-1559. However, the rising price of ETH has increased the dollar price of Ethereum’s gas fees, which has helped cheaper networks like Avalanche and Solana thrive. The market has rotated between the various Layer 1 networks in recent months, though none have come close to topping Ethereum’s $545 billion market cap. It’s not clear if that’s the reason for Cosmos’ sudden jump, or whether growing interest in its ecosystem of IBC-compatible networks is behind the rise. 

After today’s rally, Cosmos’ market cap is around $8.7 billion. That makes it the 26th biggest cryptocurrency on the market. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ATOM, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.