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Overall Cryptocurrency Market Lands Its Second Day of Recovery

source-logo  coinspeaker.com 19 December 2018 10:30, UTC

From almost dropping into double digits, the total market cap has gained a solid 14% from its yearly low over the weekend.

On Monday we could see the evaluation of the cryptocurrency market cap at around $103,370,883,000. From there the evaluation has increased to $ $121,269,503,095 what it seems to be its highest point.

24h volume at the time of writing was $19,236,606,352 with BTC Dominance of 53,7%

More and more stablecoin projects have been added to the market, and with the recent downfall of other altcoins, they are getting some recognition. Also, many investors, afraid of the market swings, have pulled out money from other coins, investing in stablecoins instead. The latter is the digital form of fiat currencies and as such provide much more stability.

On December 17th Tether entered the Top 5 by market cap and even if it stayed there for a short amount of time, the asset still ranks at 6th as of December 18th. This is excellent news for USDT which was trailed with controversies and lost $700 million of its market cap. At least, for now, it seems the cryptocurrency has managed to stabilize and recover.

Bitcoin itself sparked off the rally when it jumped over 10% from US$3,260 to over US$3,600 before pulling back a little. Fears of BTC falling to or below US$3,000 have been very real recently, however it managed to find support at US$3,200 and recover from there. Whether this is the start of a longer-term trend remains to be seen, but a Bitcoin bounce is almost always good news for the rest of the digital assets. At the time of writing the price on CoinMarketCap was $3,738.89.

Ethereum (ETH) has also increased around 8% taking it to $102.20. XRP has done even better with a remarkable 18% gain at press time. This has enabled it to expand that market cap gap over ETH again.

EOS is the top performer in the top ten by a factor of two, as it surged nearly 30% over the past 48-hours propelling it into fourth spot on the charts. This may be attributed to recent popular activities like the 3-week workshop and hackathon in India and a Global Hackathon in South Africa.

Stellar has also had a good day with a 14% climb and the rest of the top ten are in double figures aside from one. Bitcoin SV did not enjoy the big pump as it only made a couple of percentage points.

According to CoinMarketCap, BCH was valued at $90.51, with a market cap of $1.5 billion. The coin registered a 24-hour trade volume of $114 million, with a growth of 10.8% in the past 24 hours. However, this could be a momentary growth as the coin was seen going down by 0.32% since then.

According to the 24-hour trading volume, Binance reported the highest trading volume of $13 million with the BCHABC/USDT pair. Binance was followed by Upbit, with $9.7 million with BCH/KRW pair. The third position on the highest-traded volume chart was occupied by Huobi, which marked a $9 million trade with BCH/USDT pair.

It is true though that crypto market was nearly at risk of dropping below $100 billion in value on December 15. This was the first time since Aug 1 last year that such a scare had occurred. However, since that time onwards the crypto market has recovered slightly as its total value increased. Despite this recent recovery traders are still being pretty cautious toward short-term future of cryptocurrency.

Apart from the crypto space, investors in the regular financial sector are struggling to handle the instability within the global financial market because of the volatility of the United States stock market and that of China. For several months at least, it has become highly unlikely that new wave of investors or traders will enter the crypto scene from the traditional financial market giving the digital asset market breathing room.

Institutional Interest as the Catalyst for a Recovery

We all remember a year ago when cryptocurrencies were surging and Bitcoin was coming off its $US19,288 record high. However, when the end of January came this year, the crash came with it.

Bitcoin, and its fellow cryptocurrencies, plunged, but experts say the rapid fall masked some huge developments in the space and they expect Bitcoin & Co to start coming back soon.

Apollo Capital partner Henrik Anderson said:

“I expect Bitcoin to recover as it’s done many times before. It’s declined more than 85 per cent in the past and it’s recovered every time.”

Jack Quigley, founder of FinTech Australia, says he’s seeing anecdotal evidence of a “buying spree” in cryptocurrencies in the last month and large holders of crypto appear to be accumulating again.

The experts agree that institutional interest will be the catalyst for a Bitcoin recovery.

Anderson also points to evidence such as global investor Fidelity launching a custodial service for digital assets, murmurs from Goldman Sachs and Nomura of doing the same, and the New York Stock Exchange opening the Bakkt digital asset exchange in January.

The Bakkt was supposed to launch in November, but claimed interest was so high it needed more time to on-board institutions. The Nasdaq is also in on the digital game, launching Bitcoin futures in the March quarter next year.

Fatfish Blockchain chief Kin Wai Lau says growth based on institutional demand will create a more stable recovery than the speculation-born boom of 2017.

While Bitcoin could potentially rebound to $4,000 to $5,000 in the weeks to come, a cryptocurrency trader with an online alias “The Crypto Dog” emphasized that the macro trend still remains bearish.

Macro trend is still bearish – we're not "out of the bear market" There is no confirmation that the final bottom is in.

However, this current price action is not bearish and I think will continue higher. No need to rush an entry, worst case wait for a great short opportunity.

— The Crypto Dog📈 (@TheCryptoDog) December 18, 2018

Even though cryptocurrency seems to be rising, stock markets continued to fall on Monday, bringing the S&P 500 index to its lowest close for the year after a 2% drop to 2,545.94. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 507.53 points to 23,592.98, and the Nasdaq fell 2.2% to close at 6,753.73. The Dow has lost more than 1,000 points in two days.

The Dow and S&P 500 are both technically in a correction, meaning values have fallen at least 10% since recent peaks. The drops come as investors worry about continuing trade tensions, a court ruling declaring Obamacare unconstitutional, the potential partial government shutdown, the unresolved Brexit issue, and a rising backlash against big tech companies.

Some analysts have speculated that the squeeze of short contracts on margin trading platforms led most cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin that demonstrated extremely oversold conditions to endure a corrective rally.

coinspeaker.com