Kaspa soars as Bitcoin makes new high above $81k

The price of Kaspa (KAS) surged on Monday after Bitcoin reached a new landmark high following its breakout since November 5.

BTC touched $80k and continued higher amid ongoing Donald Trump win sentiment. It had it $81,800 on November 11.

Amid this uptick, KAS is one of those to show the most profitability in the past 24 hours among the top 100 gainers by market cap.

The altcoin’s price was up 14% on the 24-hour timeframe and ranked as the biggest gainer among the top four that isn’t a meme coin.

As KAS/USD traded near $0.16, only Dogecoin, dogwifhat and Floki ranked higher in terms of the top gainers in 100 list of leading coins by market cap.

Why is Kaspa price rallying today?

As Bitcoin broke to $81k, traders keen to ride the upward momentum have looked to related proof-of-work (PoW) coins.

However, the Kaspa price upside also comes as GHOSTDAG protocol PoW coin celebrates the milestone of turning three.

Kaspa marked its third anniversary on November 7.

This past year is one that saw the blockchain project and its community witness some key developments.

In August 2024, Kaspa welcomed the Crescendo hard fork, an upgrade that aimed at increasing the crypto network's block rate.

The target was a move from one block-per-second (1 BPS) to 10 blocks per second, with the team looking to achieve this across phases.

Kaspa has also seen the hard fork’s testnet TN11 run smoothly since its launch in January 2024, with feedback helping to identify bottlenecks.

Major Kaspa network milestones

The past year has also seen the ecosystem benefit from major milestones such as the unveiling of the Kaspa Ecosystem Foundation and Kaspa Japan Ecosystem Association.

The foundations are central to Kaspa’s programs like funding of research grants and startup incubation.

However, one of the biggest boosts for Kaspa in the past year is the June 2024 support from Marathon Digital Holdings.

Marathon, a leading Bitcoin mining company, revealed in June that it had been mining KAS since September 2023. Its operation amounted to 93 million KAS mined by June, with that valued at over $15 million at the time.

With BTC mining firms making notable gains amid the price surge, the addition of KAS to Marathon’s portfolio has only helped the altcoin’s price higher.

Notably, Kaspa’s price has surged more than 40% in the past week, compared to nearly 19% for Bitcoin at the time of writing.

The potential for BTC price to rise even further means Kaspa could follow suit as sentiment improves.

Currently, KAS reached its all-time high of $0.2074 in August and is just 25% from this peak at prevailing prices.