It looks like some interesting things have been happening in the altcoin sector overnight. Virtually all major altcoins saw their value decrease by a spectacular margin. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is surging back to the US$1,600 mark as we speak. It appears the Poloniex exchange suffered from some brief outages again last night, which doesn’t help matters much.
Looking at the Coinmarketcap website, it is not hard to see how things have gone utterly wrong for a lot of alternative currencies. Virtually every coin has taken some hits overnight, although things are trying to stabilize as we speak. Ether lost a fair bit of value but seems to be recovering slowly. Litecoin took a near 15% drop but is starting to bounce back as well.
Altcoin Landscape Gets Roughed Up
Then again, some people will argue a retrace was to be expected. A lot of money has poured into altcoins these past few weeks, and that bullish momentum had to relent at some point. With the Bitcoin value going up once again, it does not appear there is a shortage of money coming in to cryptocurrency right now. In fact, the overall market cap surpassed the US$50bn mark for the first time, and it looks like things will not slow down anytime soon.
In terms of 24-hour trading volume, there are no complaints whatsoever. The past 24 hours resulted in nearly US$3bn worth of cryptocurrency changing hands across all markets combined. Nearly half of that volume belongs to Bitcoin, as was to be expected. However, both Stellar Lumens and XRP have seen their fair share of volume as well, with US$360m and US$361m respectively.
Ethereum is slowly losing some trading volume, although US$243m in a 24-hour period is not bad by any means. Litecoin is in the top five as well, with over US$167m in volume. It is evident Bitcoin and the top altcoins are placed on a different level compared to most other cryptocurrencies right now. Do not overlook Monero either, though, as the anonymity-oriented currency has surpassed the US$29 mark. These are still incredibly bullish times for Bitcoin and altcoins, and trading based on emotions should be avoided at all costs.
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