Bitcoin price – live: Crypto back above $50k as ‘Alt Season’ sees Cardano, Solana and Hex hit all-time highs

Former England star Daniel Sturridge has become the latest footballer to show interest in getting into the crypto space.

It comes less than a month, after Lionel Messi made waves by including some of Paris Saint Germain’s cryptocurrency fan tokens in his signing on fee for the French club.

It’s not just cryptocurrency that Sturridge says he’s looking to get involved with, making a call on Twitter for more info regarding non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

“I’m a novice and haven’t invested a penny YET,” he tweeted.

Bitcoin has seen a sudden surge overnight that has returned it above $50,000.

The 5 per cent gains were matched or bettered by every single leading cryptocurrency, with all of the top 10 most valuable cryptos benefiting from the market swell.

Cardano (ada) saw the biggest price rise, reaching above $3 for the first time in its history and push its market cap towards $100 billion. Solana also hit a new all-time high and is now closing in on dogecoin in terms of overall value.

Twitter could be about to add the ability to tip other users with bitcoin, according to reports.

A leaked image from mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi appears to show what the service will look like, while MacRumors also corroborates the claims.

The tipping feature will apparently use the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which facilitates quick and cheap transactions through a layer 2 protocol. Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has previously called for bitcoin to become the “native currency of the internet”.

While bitcoin remains relatively calm – it’s moved by less than 0.1 per cent since this time yesterday – the so-called alt coins appear to be on the charge.

Ethereum (ether) is now up by more than 5 per cent over the last 24 hours, while Cardano (ada), Binance Coin and Polkadot have also seen more modest gains.

It continues a trend that has seen bitcoin’s overall share of the crypto market diminish over the last few months, leading some market analysts to proclaim that it’s “Alt Season”.

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey has unveiled his plan this week to transform bitcoin into the “native currency of the internet”.

His TBD venture, which is a unit of his other firm Square, is working on a decentralised crypto exchange that will make bitcoin more accessible to people all over the world.

“This platform will be entirely developed in public, open-source, open-protocol, and any wallet will be able to use,” Mike Brock, general manager of TBD, wrote in a Twitter thread outlining the project. “No foundation or governance model that TBD controls. Permissionless or bust. We’d love for this to be bitcoin-native, top to bottom.”

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Bitcoin and other leading cryptocurrencies are riding high at the start of a new month.

After a tumultuous May, June and July, it was a good August for the cryptocurrency market, growing by more than half a trillion dollars. It currently commands a combined market cap of more than $2 trillion, with bitcoin leading the bounce back with a price rise from below $30,000 to nearly $50,000.

It remains a long way off the all-time high it experienced in April, however several of its rivals a enjoying record-breaking runs – most notably Cardano (ada).

It is now ranked the third most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, behind bitcoin and Ethereum (ether), having risen from $0.18 at the start of the year to nearly $3 over the weekend. It has since dipped but continues to trade around $2.80.

to The Independent’s live blog of the crypto market. We’ll have rolling coverage of all the latest news, price updates and market analysis – together with input from industry experts and seasoned traders.