How Bitcoin's gains benefit the broader crypto sector

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) soared to a record high of $72,000, hovering near its new benchmark during Tuesday's trading session. Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down the details, providing insight into the gains across the entire cryptocurrency market.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith .

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: Bitcoin touching a record earlier this week. You can see back above $72,000. Now, the currency hovering at that milestone level. So what's ahead? We want to bring in "Yahoo Finance's" Jared Blikre for a closer look that of what we are looking at this morning.

Jared, there is a decent amount of green on your screen there.

JARED BLIKRE: Yes, there is. And Ethereum, OK, it's down about one-third of a percent. Let me just point out the number holding above $4,000. And if I put a five-year chart on, that's what you got to take a look at. More like a three- to five-year chart.

So you can see those highs that we had in 2021. It is marching right back in there. And it's not just Bitcoin. It's not Ethereum. Let me show a Bitcoin chart real quickly. You can see Bitcoin having eclipsed those highs. Look a little bit different than Ethereum.

But we've also seen some other tokens. Some other-- the altcoins come back. Here is Ripple up 12%, 13% over the last 24 hours. Let me show you a two-month chart, because it had a big up day yesterday. You can see it's up about 23% over the last two months.

So lagging Bitcoin, lagging Ethereum. But that's a trend that I've seen. A lot of these smaller tokens like Litecoin. Besides yesterday, when's the last time I said Litecoin? It's been forever. That had a huge day. That's now catching up. Up 34% over the last two months.

And we've also seen some action in the stock. But there have been winners and there have been losers. In fact, let me show you a one-month chart. We got MicroStrategy. That's doing very well. That's up over 100%. They have doubled their price. Coinbase up 70%. Robinhood, up a very respectable 37%.

But you can see a lot of losers down here. Riot Blockchain down 28%. Bakkt down 41%. So it's a game of have and have nots. Also, in the ETF space, where we had all these spot Bitcoin ETF rushing to market, guess what, two of the Bitcoin funds that just launched in January have some of the highest flows that we've seen all year. And that's considering the entire universe of US ETFs.

So you have two S&P 500 ETFs grabbing the top spots that's VOO, IVV. That's BlackRock and Vanguard offering. Then we have iShares, their Bitcoin offering. Then we have Fidelity. So that's $10 and $6.2 billion in flows already this year.

So this is just a very fast growing asset class. I would remind people GLD, the gold ETF, launched in 2004, very fortuitous timing, echoes of that right here with Bitcoin.