Everyone knew a breakout was coming. A tight trading pattern lasted for weeks, which is almost always a precursor to big activity, one way or the other. In the case of Bitcoin and most everything else in the crypto market over the past 24-hours, things went very positive.
Bears lost their stranglehold on the market and plenty of short positions were likely vaporized. Traders in recent weeks had become accustomed to movements of sometimes less than $100 in a whole day. Like as not, plenty of positions were primed for movements of that size. But virtually every market saw Bitcoin go over $3,700 in the past 24 hours, and the rest of the market is lifted as a result.
The increased valuation of Bitcoin had a side effect of bringing Ripple (XRP) back over $0.30. Ethereum’s rise to just under $120 wasn’t enough to launch it into the second spot in the market cap rankings, where Ripple currently sits. This reporter still feels bearish about XRP, at least for the interim. Mass adoption is an important vector in considering the prospects of cryptocurrencies.
The other notable happening on the markets was the reshuffling of the top 5 by market capitalization. Litecoin displaced EOS for the fourth spot in the rankings.
Litecoin grew more on its own merit than it did by virtue of the overall market capitalization increase, which was significant. Yesterday, as this capture shows, the overall market cap of the top 10 cryptos was around $95 billion. Today it’s more like over $103 billion.
Judging by the green percentages all the way down the top 100 cryptocurrencies, the money wasn’t coming from other crypto markets. It’s new money. The only big question is: will it stay or run? If we’re in a true bull run, anything is possible. Let’s keep in mind that sharp pops in either direction can often precede massive breaks in the opposite direction.