The price of a single bitcoin continued to fall after its highs over the weekend. But altcoins, which had taken a backseat to bitcoin’s surge, picked up the slack to push the market valuation for cryptocurrencies past the $600 billion mark. At 14:28 UTC, bitcoin was trading at $17,914.20, down 5.52% in the last 24 hours.
The overall market capitalization for cryptocurrencies was $619.8 billion, up from yesterday’s $591.1 billion. It took just five days for the cryptocurrency market to increase its valuation by $100 billion. Altcoins are mainly responsible for this surge and current developments could be a precursor to a more diverse future in cryptocurrency markets.
The top 10 most-traded cryptocurrencies will play an important role in that future and most of them were on track yesterday, registering double-digit gains in the last 24 hours. Cardano, a cryptocurrency which reversed course over the weekend, shot up once again, trading at $0.55, an increase of 16.59% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin Cash set a new high by trading at $2,501.29 at 09:44 UTC. The bitcoin rival, which announced an integration with payment processor BitPay yesterday, was priced at $2,372.32, an increase of 17.69% in the last 24 hours.
IOTA, a cryptocurrency for the Internet of Things economy, was the other one with a major announcement. Appliance maker Bosch Group’s venture capital arm, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmBH (RBVC), has purchased a “significant number” of IOTA tokens. According to Hongquan Jiang, investment partner at RBVC, IOTA’s tangle technology could solve major problems for blockchain adoption in IoT, such as scalability and transaction volumes.
Dominik Schiener, IOTA co-founder, said such collaborations and partnerships “obviously” drive demand for the IOTA token (and, thereby, increase valuations) but his team was focused on developing concrete use-cases “that make the need for IOTA apparent.”
Back in bitcoin-land, however, there are a bunch of new statistics analyzing its rise. For example, online publication qz.com states that, at current growth rates, the total value of all bitcoin will pass that of stocks listed on the NYSE by October 2018. For that to happen, bitcoin will need wide adoption rates among investors and users. They might be up to the task. A LendEDU survey found that 51% plan to make, at least, one physical purchase using the cryptocurrency and 7.5% plan on increasing their holdings.
Well-known investor Bill Miller told CNBC yesterday that half of his holdings were in bitcoin. He bought the cryptocurrency for prices ranging between $200 to $500 and is using it to mitigate risk to his fund and portfolio. “It won’t be 50 percent of the fund for that much longer, which does not mean necessarily that we’re going to be selling it,” he said.
In the meanwhile, Japanese finance minister Taro Aso told reporters that bitcoin has “not yet been proven to be credible enough” as a currency. His remarks are especially significant when considered within the context of Japan’s economy. The Asian country was the first one to legalize bitcoin for daily transactions. There are no statistics regarding its use within the country and Aso said he needs to “watch for a little more (time).” (See also: Bitcoin Gets Boost From Japan.)
Finally, there’s a contrary perspective from Andrew Left of Citron Research. Left gained attention with his bet against Valeant in 2015. He was on Bloomberg yesterday discussing prices for Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC). ”There’s an incredibly naive investor base behind this who doesn’t want to check the extra boxes to open a futures account,” he said. Left is short the entity. According to him, the gap between the trust’s holdings and its price is because of investors “who do not know what they’re doing.” The Trust trades at a significant premium in unregulated OTC markets. A fall in its prices could negatively affect bitcoin prices.
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https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-price-continues-falling-cryptocurrency-market-crosses-600b/
