The cryptocurrency market continues its steady upward march, crossing the $400 billion mark in late-April and is now en route to hitting the $500 billion mark within the next few weeks.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Bitcoin and Ethereum Leads Bull Run
In the lead of 2018 bull run are the top two cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum. After suffering a devastating correction at the beginning of the year, both digital currencies are gradually recovering, making promising gains over the last couple of months.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Ethereum, the smaller of the two, has had an impressive run ever since it bottomed out at $368 on April 6, increasing by over 120% in coin value in the last month alone. This astronomical growth is reflected in the ETH-BTC 1-month chart, where Ether has increased by 45% against Bitcoin, going from approximately 0.055 ETH to over 0.08 ETH per BTC. The market capitalization of Ethereum has also surged from $36 billion to over $80 billion.
The reason behind Ethereum’s recently gained momentum is perhaps because of the recent clarification that Ethereum is not a security under the laws of the US Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC), courtesy of a series of detailed analysis done by respected experts and analysts.
This comes as a relieve to Ethereum investors after Gary Gensler, a former CFTC regulator, recently claimed that Ethereum is a “noncompliant security” that is operating outside of the U.S. jurisdiction.Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin has also refuted Gensler’s claims in an interview with TheStreet, a financial publication in New York. Lubin, who is now the founder of Consensys, said that he is “extremely comfortable” and confident that the founders of Ethereum started the project while ensuring that it complied with various regulations.
“We spent a tremendous amount of time with lawyers in the US and in other countries, and are extremely comfortable that it is not a security; it never was a security…we are absolutely unconcerned about the current discussions.”
Bitcoin, on the other hand, also experienced modest gains – after recovering from its bottom of $6,600, it has been slowly making its way back up to a five-digit price tag. As of price time, it is trading at $9,834 – almost a 50% increase.
Source: CoinMarketCap
This increase in price is probably due to the rise in Bitcoin’s 24-hour trade volume from below $5 billion to just over $10 billion. In comparison, the total crypto market trade volume in the last 24 hours is around $25 billion. Furthermore, Bitcoin’s dominance has also dropped back to 35.9% – a sign that the cryptocurrency market has entered a bull market.