Parabolic Bitcoin Rally Prompts Warnings

The most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin continues its rally, surpassing the USD 12,000 and USD 13,000 marks, approaching USD 14,000 in one day and prompting analysts to warn investors. (Updated on 19:42 UTC with the latest market data.)

Moreover, bitcoin dominance, or the percentage of the total market capitalization, jumped by 3 percentage points to 63%, the level last seen in December 2017, when the coin touched USD 20,000.

At pixel time (19:39 UTC), bitcoin trades at c. USD 13,755 and is up by more than 21% in the past 24 hours, 50% in the past week and 124% in the past 12 months. Last time it was at this level is January 2018.

Bitcoin price chart:

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance said in a recent research that bitcoin is expected to continue dominating the market over the course of 2019, with over 50% of Binance VIP & Institutional clients indicating that they predict bitcoin dominance will remain in the 40%-60% range by the end of 2019.
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Meanwhile, according to Mati Greenspan, a senior market analyst at the eToro trading platform, the recent gain is a "clear indication of the extreme heat and the change of season."

"Careful before rejoicing though. If we've learned anything from the movie Frozen, euphoria can be dangerous. <...> Though we haven't seen any of the dramatic hazards that sometimes arise from over-enthusiasm just yet (too much web traffic, congestion in the blockchain, etc.), a massive bull market retracement of 20% or more is always a possibility," he said, adding that all the data indicates that the current rally is coming from crypto traders, who are already familiar with the market and don't need to google "how to buy bitcoin."

Money flow into bitcoin in the past 24 hours (in USD):

Tether: 4.07 billion
USD: 1.11 billion
Euro: 285.8 million
JPY: 258.34 million
CNY: 229.46 million
KRW: 82 million
GBP: 73 million
Source: Coinlib, (06:28 UTC)

"As we can see, the bulk of inflows to bitcoin and ethereum are coming from USDT. There is fresh fiat coming in, but it seems that most of the action is coming from money that's been sitting on the sidelines in stablecoins," Greenspan said.

However, according to Francis Pouliot, CEO and co-founder of the Canadian exchange BullBitcoin, "This may be the most unpredictable market I've ever seen in Bitcoin. Don't lose bitcoins on greed. I genuinely have no idea what's about to happen."

Meanwhile, ethereum is the second best performer among the top 10 coins by market capitalization. It advanced by 13% and trades at c. USD 351.

Other coins from the top 10 are registering up to 8% gains today. Binance coin is down by 1%.

However, altcoins are still crashing against bitcoin.
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Crypto flow from bitcoin into other coins in the past 24 hours (in USD):

Ethereum: 1.63 billion
Litecoin: 959 million
XRP: 504 million
EOS: 455 million
Bitcoin Cash: 391 million
NEO: 158 million
Zcash: 146 million
Source: Coinlib, (06:28 UTC)
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