Bitcoin is slowly climbing again as it’s back to $17,000 according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin’s highest point of 2018 (so far) was $17,600 on January 5. Although Bitcoin has seen better days than this, it’s certainly a relief for many investors which thought Bitcoin’s time was coming to an end. Bitcoin’s recovery may also be a sign of the cryptocurrency preparing to surge to new all-time highs.
Bitcoin broke records and almost reached the $20,000 mark at the start of December 2017. However, it started to decline in the latter half of the month as the South Korean government started placing restrictions on Bitcoin holders. This was done to prevent Bitcoin from rising further and this was successful to an extent as Bitcoin fell from over $19,000 to $13,000 in just a few days. This period of decline saw many altcoins such as Ripple and Ethereum surge to all-time highs.
Ripple overtook Ethereum to become the second largest cryptocurrency in the world and both Ethereum and Ripple joined the exclusive $100 billion market cap club.
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However, it seems as though the altcoin rally has come to a screeching halt as Bitcoin started its recovery a few days ago. As Bitcoin started its resurgence, the market cap of the entire cryptocurrency market rose to an all-time high above $782 billion and it’s still climbing. It’s currently sitting at $795 billion.
With Bitcoin currently sitting at $17,024 (as of this writing) with a market cap of $285 billion, there’s no real explanation that stands out in explaining why Bitcoin started growing again all of a sudden. One possible explanation is that people still believe that Bitcoin will reach new heights and thus waited for Bitcoin to become a bit cheaper in order to invest in it. People may have also traded in their profits from the altcoin surge for BTC since it’s one of the few major coins that hasn’t seen a major price change in the last two weeks.
As mentioned earlier, altcoins started declining as Bitcoin rose. Ripple reached an all-time high of $3.8 on Thursday before falling massively to $2.8 on Friday. Although it’s back up to $3, it still saw a massive dip in a matter of just a few hours.
Despite Ripple declining, it still retains its spot as the second largest cryptocurrency in the world as Ethereum looks to catch up as it reached a record $1000 in value. On some exchanges, Ethereum has fallen below $1000 again but the global average remains above $1000 (possibly due to the South Korean market driving up prices). Ethereum is also just clinging on to the $100 billion market cap as it was at $99 billion just a few hours ago.
Other altcoins also surged during the past few weeks and they also fell during this altcoin decline. Although Ripple was the first one to drop, it still managed to stay at a relatively high price (currently trading at $3) whereas other coins fell quite substantially. At one point between Thursday to Friday, the altcoin market cap fell below $500 billion.
Fourth-placed Bitcoin cash rose by only 2% from Thursday to Friday and 6% in the last 24 hours, which hardly recovers for its poor performance in the last few weeks. Cardano and NEM fell by double digits from Thursday to Friday and Cardano fell by another 6% in the last 24 hours. NEM is back up but by only 1%. Both of them fell are significant price surges, however, they’re still valued above the $1 mark.
Litecoin slowly rose in the past 2 days, with it seeing growth in double digits in the last 24 hours. Litecoin had also suffered significantly recently but its current upward trend seems to be slowly reversing the damage that had been done.
The best performance came from TRON which grew by almost 30% from Thursday to Friday however this was shortlived as it fell by 17% in the past 24 hours. Even though TRON has fallen a lot in the past few hours, it has still grown considerably.
With some altcoins having suffered more than the rest as well as some altcoins recovering alongside Bitcoin, the crypto market for 2018 seems to be doing well overall as it’s at an all-time high market cap currently. With Bitcoin’s price increasing again, it’s possible that the prediction of many experts claiming Bitcoin to surge even higher than before in 2018 might become a reality.
