Bitcoin Accelerates Above USD 11.5K, Litecoin Hits USD 100 (UPDATED 2)
The price of the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, is back above USD 11,500, or the level last seen in mid-July. Majority of other coins from the top 100 are also in green, however, bitcoin dominance keeps rising.
(Updated on 07:00 UTC: a new section – “China again” has been added.
Updated on 13:21 UTC: updated price information, two new paragraphs (in bold) and tweets have been added.)
At pixel time (13:04 UTC), bitcoin trades at c. USD 11,780 and is up by more than 10% in the past 24 hours and by almost 24% in the past week, and by 3.5% in the past month.
Bitcoin price chart:
Meanwhile, bitcoin dominance, or the percentage of the total market capitalization surpassed 67%. The total market capitalization is up by 8% in the past 24 hours and stands at USD 311.7 billion.
Other coins from the top 10 are also in green today, while litecoin accelerated its gains following the halving and hit USD 100. The price is up by 10% in the past 24 hours. Other major coins are registering 1%-6% gains.
Platincoin (+50% today) and Ren (+33%) are among the best performers today.
Money flow into bitcoin in the past 24 hours, USD:
Tether 3.6bn
USD 646m
JPY 159m
CNY 137m
EUR 140m
GBP 60m
KRW 59m
Source: Coinlib.io, 13:12 UTC
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Compared to the previous week, the flow increased but it didn’t reach considerably higher levels seen during the rally in June.
China again
Meanwhile, many are attributing the rally today to the fact that China on Monday let the yuan tumble beyond the key 7-per-dollar level for the first time in more than a decade. It may be a sign that Beijing might be willing to tolerate further currency weakness in the face of an escalating trade row with the United States.
As reported, Arthur Hayes, co-founder & CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform BitMEX, already in May warned that similar to 2015, a sharp and sudden yuan depreciation could lead to the beginning of another “epic bull market.”
“With the turmoil in markets and the streets, suddenly digital gold doesn’t seem like such a bad idea,” Jehan Chu, managing partner at blockchain investment and advisory firm Kenetic Capital, told Bloomberg. “Bitcoin is increasingly seen not only as a bet on the future, but as a shelter for the present.”
Charles Yang, head trader at Hong Kong-based over-the-counter digital-asset trading firm Genesis Block, estimates that bitcoin should test USD 12,000 “soon.” “This is, of course, assuming we believe macro issues actually drive Bitcoin,” he told Bloomberg.
“We have been seeing, from my vantage point, a softening in the Chinese stance towards crypto,” Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of crypto financial services firm Circle, told CNBC.
Watch the whole interview below:
Meanwhile, Tom Maxon, Head of U.S. Operations at CoolBitX, a blockchain security company, believes that it has less to do with macro conditions and more with whales taking advantage of the market momentum.
“Billions of dollars in daily volume are handled by whales and managed portfolios through over-the-counter (OTC) desks, and actually relatively smaller volume is held in exchanges that are accessible by retail investors. OTC desks are largely unregulated and therefore, it is impossible to know exactly where the inflows and outflows are coming from. These whales and shrewd, large-volume traders (including exchanges themselves) will most likely leverage bitcoin’s current upward momentum toward a new high from its previous peak in order to short it to the detriment of less powerful retail traders,” according to Maxon.
Read more: What a Possible Global Recession Could Mean for Crypto
