After weeks of sluggish performance, Bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies are seeing a bit of a surge. Bitcoin has maintained a price level near the $7,500 mark while other cryptos have seen a nice upwards trend in the past week. They've included Ethereum, Litecoin, Stellar, and IOTA. Ethereum (ETH) was among the week's high risers out of the top 10. Considered one of the top altcoins, it was up nearly 5 percent as of Saturday (July 21) at $466. It had gained almost 8 percent during the past week and hit a $500 price back on Wednesday (July 18). Ethereum had been over $1,300 back in January of this year. In addition to Ethereum, there were a few other noteworthy movers. Litecoin (LTC) was up over 3 percent for the day, showing a price of $83.53 at Coinbase as of this report. As seen on CoinMarketCap, Stellar (XLM) had moved up over 7 percent while IOTA (MIOTA) had gone up about 5 percent in the past 24 hours. During the past week, the total market capitalization peaked at $300 billion. As of Saturday, it was around $282.7 billion. That was an increase of two percent for the past day. Cardano (ADA) had one of the biggest increases of any altcoin over the week, gaining 23 percent on its price. However, it was only up 1.53 percent over the past 24 hours. A few pieces of news may have helped to inspire the recent upward trends. On Friday (July 20), Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) reported that the there had been a 93 percent increase in the daily average volume of futures trading from Q2 over Q1. In addition, CME said there was a 58 percent increase in total open contracts for Bitcoin futures. Another factor that may have helped the price boost were comments made by BitMEX trading platform CEO Arthur Hayes on Thursday (July 19). According to CNBC, Hayes mentioned that he believes Bitcoin may test the lower levels again around the $5,000 mark before surging as high as $50,000 in 2018. That's certainly encouraging news for Bitcoin enthusiasts who saw the price top $20,000 months ago, before falling drastically.