Bitcoin Hits 15-Month High as Naysayers Double Down on 'Dead Cat Bounce'

Bitcoin was holding steady around $10,850 on June 24 after a fresh surge took it above $11,000 for the first time in over a year.

Data from Coin360 showed a slight correction kicking in for bitcoin on Monday, markets consolidating gains after a dramatic weekend.

BTC/USD had climbed as high as $11,230 in recent days, marking its best performance since early March 2018.

The action did not go unnoticed, with mainstream media titles appearing to struggle with explaining the return of a cryptocurrency they had previously announced all but dead. Many quoted traditional finance sources who maintained that the current bull-run is doomed to fail and that bitcoin investors will ultimately lose everything in fiat terms.

"Don't get fooled by the dead-cat bounce this year," Whitney Tilson, founder of Empire Financial Research and a former hedge-fund manager said quoted by Bloomberg.

Bitcoin's weekly gains currently total just over 17%, while monthly returns are closer to 35%.Bitcoin 7-day price chart.

Altcoins fared somewhat worse as BTC/USD corrected, with many in the top twenty by market cap shedding 2-3% in the 24 hours to press time.

Ethereum fell 3% to hit $306, while Ripple was trading 5% lower at just over $0.45 per token.

Bucking the trend was Tron, which gained 3.1% after the network saw the launch of its first stablecoin asset.

The total cryptocurrency market cap is now comfortably above $300 billion, Bitcoin's weekend moonshot further expanding its market dominance to more than 59%. As Cointelegraph reported, multiple significant factors suggest the largest crytocurrency's longer-term trajectory will take it far past previous all-time highs.