At 10:00 AM MSK on May 21, the price of Bitcoin on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange was $69,800 in a pair with the stablecoin USDT. Over the past week, Bitcoin has gained more than 12%, exceeding $71,000 for the first time since the end of April.

The rise in the price of the first cryptocurrency is linked to the ongoing inflow of funds into spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for Bitcoin in the US for the seventh consecutive day. By the end of trading on May 21, the inflow amounted to $306 million. The total value of assets under management of such funds reached $58 billion.

At 10:00 AM, the price of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was $3,751. The price of ETH increased by 3% in one day and by 30% over the week. The rapid growth followed a request from the US SEC to update the registration forms for spot ETFs on Ethereum. The SEC is expected to make a decision on VanEck's application to launch a spot ETF based on Ethereum on May 23.

The SEC's change in stance regarding Ethereum ETFs led to a sharp increase in the cryptocurrency's price.

Amid Ethereum's price rally, the open interest (OI) on ETH futures contracts reached a new all-time high of $14 billion, according to Coinglass data.

Other major cryptocurrencies generally followed the leaders. Binance's BNB, Ripple's XRP, Toncoin (TON), and Cardano (ADA) saw price increases of 2% to 3% over the past 24 hours. The exception was Solana (SOL), which fell by 2.3% over the last day.