The past few hours have been pretty interesting for cryptocurrency supporters. After two days of Bitcoin price declines, things have rebounded slightly with a 0.84% gain. Bitcoin Cash, on the other hand, fell 12.5% in value even though it is far more profitable to mine right now. Other cryptocurrencies making big moves include IOTA, NEM, Dash, and OmiseGo. Though the weekend is only a snapshot of how trading markets work, this Sunday has proven to be particularly interesting, to say the least.
Bitcoin Price Shows Signs of a Small Rebound
Ever since the Bitcoin price surpassed the US$4,000 mark, people have been overly excited about what the future would hold. At one time, it looked as if the Bitcoin price would reach US$4,500 and possibly higher. Those dreams were crushed pretty quickly, as the Bitcoin price began showing signs of a potential correction. Things have not turned out overly bad these past few days, although maintaining the US$4,100 mark has proven quite difficult all weekend. Right now, we see a small nudge upward thanks to a 0.84% gain over the past 24 hours.
Moreover, the Bitcoin trading volume remains above the US$2 billion mark for several days now, which is rather impressive. Keeping in mind how weekends often see less than US$1 billion in trading volume for Bitcoin, this weekend has proven to be something else entirely in a good way. It is good to see so many people still focusing on the world’s leading cryptocurrency, even though it has received some stiff competition from Bitcoin Cash these past few days.
Speaking of which, the Bittrex BCC/BTC market is the main driver of Bitcoin trading volume right now. This goes to show that a lot of people have been flipping Bitcoin Cash back and forth in an effort to increase their Bitcoin holdings. BCH shows no signs of buckling at this point, and despite a lot of pressure on the exchanges in terms of sell orders and random coin dump periods, Bitcoin Cash has proven quite resilient. Interestingly enough, there are currently four Bitcoin Cash-related markets in the top 7 as far as Bitcoin trading volume is concerned.
Other markets in the top 10 include USD, KRW, and CNY trading pairs. It is evident that the main focus is on Bitcoin Cash right now, rather than converting fiat currencies to and from Bitcoin. That isn’t necessarily a trend to be concerned about right now, though, as this is somewhat common in the world of Bitcoin trading during weekends. Bithumb is still among the top five markets, which is good to see. Two Chinese exchanges being in the top 10 is also a positive sign. Interestingly enough, Huobi lists the Bitcoin price as US$4,436.50 right now — a large premium compared to the market average, to say the least.
For now, it is a bit unclear as to what the future holds for the Bitcoin price. It is evident there is still a lot of room for upward momentum, although the market is showing some bearish signals as well. Then again, that is only to be expected, as the Bitcoin price has undergone a massive bull run over the past few weeks, and indeed throughout all of the year 2017. A correction will need to occur at some point, although it is always hard to predict how steep that correction will be. To this point, we have experienced a dip of around 7%, although it is not necessarily the last correction we will see in the coming weeks.
If similar trading volume remains in place for Bitcoin, there is no reason for concern whatsoever. A US$2 billion volume on a Sunday is highly uncommon for cryptocurrency markets in general. For Bitcoin, it is slowly becoming the new normal, which paints a positive outlook for its future. Bitcoin Cash is doing its own thing and poses no real threat for Bitcoin itself. The only threat to the latter ecosystem is SegWit2x and individuals bickering over implementing a scaling solution with a block size increase attached to it. It will be interesting to see how things play out, but for now the Bitcoin price is doing just fine.
