Hello Friends,
(BTC) prices are up around .05 percent on Thursday, August 16, bringing the leading cryptocurrency solidly back over $6,000 after a market fall that had seen BTC dip below that psychological price point on August 14.
The price performance comes as the cryptocurrency industry becomes increasingly indifferent to the potential effect of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) acceptance or rejection by U.S. regulators.
Previously hailed as a factor which could propel or deflate markets significantly, Andreas Antonopoulos joined Nick Szabo in fresh skepticism of ETFs this week, the latter arguing they “might cause more problems than they’re worth.”
In a Q&A session recording, Antonopoulos described ETFs as “a multibillion dollar ‘not your keys, not your Bitcoin’ scheme.”
Other major altcoins posted broadly flat growth, with the exception of Stellar (XLM), which is down around 3 percent on the day, trading at around $0.22 by press time. Another altcoin outlier is Ethereum Classic (ETC), whose addition to Coinbase may have sent prices soaring by over 16 percent on the day, with the coin currently trading around $14.09 by press time.
Total market cap is around $207 billion by press time, a number last seen in November 2017.
Thanks,