Hi Steemians,
Movement returned to cryptoasset markets during the evening of 17 Feb, UTC time, after more than a week of calm. Several market leaders made upward movement, adding gains onto Bitcoin’s breakout more than a week ago.
Bitcoin (BTC) itself saw as much as 5% gain during the movement, from roughly $3,620 to $3,780 on CryptoCompare’s index. The uptrend was a successful conclusion of a drawn-out “bull flag” formation, started on 8 Feb. The movement has cooled off and now sits at $3,751 at time of writing, and the price is so far holding the new price level - suggesting the possibility of an additional bull flag forming.
Significantly, ETH has seen its 24-hour volume surpass that of bitcoin to reach $1.57 billion.
Ethereum (ETH) completed a nearly identical movement, in complete harmony with Bitcoin’s move. Ethereum has also spent the last week-plus trending upward in a bull flag, after its own 8 Feb. breakout. All in all, Ethereum put about 13% of gains on the board, and is so far stable at its new price.
XRP (XRP) saw slight gains on the order of 5%. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) had an impressive rally as well, clawing its way back to recent highs set in on 8 Feb. EOS (EOS) also saw a roughly 5% price rise.
Litecoin (LTC) was the exception today, hardly participating in the rallies - obviously still cooling off from a more than 40% upward movement on 8 Feb.
Mati Greenspan, a professional market analyst with eToro, noted the healthy amount of volume fueling this movement - outstripping volume on the 8 Feb. push. He also noted the increasing amount of “clean USD” - as opposed to Tether (USDT) or Bitcoin - contributing to the market movements.
Another very healthy sign is that the moves are happening on strong volume.
On Feb-8th we saw total volumes across exchanges bottom out at $14 billion. Today this figure is up to $27 billion.
Moves that happen on stronger volumes tend to be more meaningful. pic.twitter.com/n15nntlOUR
— Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) February 18, 2019
Also worth noting is the higher level of "clean USD" contributing to the pump.
BTC and USDT are still dominant but USD (blue) reached near 16% as the markets moved higher. pic.twitter.com/65gDZuqmf8
— Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) February 18, 2019
But Greenspan made sure to emphasize that we’re still in a bear market, and that the market is “not even close” to breaking key levels and changing the long-term trend.
Cheers