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Bitcoin’s near-vertical rise continues , with the cryptocurrency scaling the $59,000 mark early Wednesday . Ether (ETH) topped $3,300, and the CoinDesk 20 Index, a measure of the broader market, jumped 3.5% to $2,177. The bears, if any, have been put on notice as bitcoin (BTC) is now just 16% short of challenging the record high of $69,000. The distance could be covered easily before April’s mining reward halving, assuming Wall Street continues pouring money into the spot exchange-traded funds, maintaining the demand-supply imbalance. That said, the market increasingly looks overheated, not only in terms of funding rates , but also because, as Santiment data show, the top trending cryptocurrency on social media in the past 24 hours is PEPE. The meme token’s market cap has skyrocketed by 153% this week, CoinDesk data show. Such frenzied action in smaller coins often presages market-wide price pullbacks. While past performance is no guarantee of future behavior, some traders have started purchasing bitcoin puts to hedge potential downside risks.