Bitcoin has had a good start to the year
So far this year, bitcoin (BTC) has increased by 44 percent from $3,700 to $5,320. Alongside oil which returned 39% bitcoin has become one of the best performing assets. Gold has gone up merely 1 percent. The S & P 500 have done better at 17 percent and the Nasdaq at 22 percent.
The initial 20 percent rally of BTC set the stage as it rose from $4,200 to $5,000. This appeared to change sentiment in the crypto market and bitcoin and the crypto market did not slow back down as many expected. Even during the past few days BTC is continuing to increase its price breaking past the $5,300 level to record a 32 percent gain just within the last month. The bitcoin momentum and the significant rise of Binance Coin (BNB) has led to total cryptocurrency market to gain by around $70 billion since last February.
Binance Coin (BNB)
Binance Coin is now the 7th most valuable cryptocurrency on the market. In less than four months BNB has gained 322 percent becoming the first cryptocoin to break its all-time high since 2017. Bitcoin’s all time high was around $20,000. The rally was triggered by the launching of Binance Chain that is explained in this article. Some traders think that the release may fuel the recovery of other cryptocurrencies especially ethereum.
At the height of the 2017 bull market the rise of ethereum (ETH) to $1,500 help increase the demand for other cryptocurrencies.
One recognized trader mused: “Thinking if BNB could trigger the new altcoin bull run as ETH did in the past.”
Reports indicate there has been an unexpected large increase in the number of institutional investors coming into the crypto market during the last year. The impact of this on the market remains uncertain. What is likely effecting the market in the short term is the large amount of funds sitting on the sidelines in the form of stable coins, hedge funds, and fiat money.
As Su Zhu, the CEO of Three Arrows Capital said earlier: “There’s an estimated $2 billion in cash sitting at crypto funds/holdcos. Theres another $2 billion+ sitting in stablecoins, and another $2 billion sitting at exchanges/silvergate/signature. This is $6 billion fiat already onboarded to crypto to buy your bags. Imagine thinking we need new money to hit $10k.”
If this existing capital starts to move back in to the market as sentiment improves then investor’s may be able to recover from last year’s losses.
The BInance Chain
The chain was created to support the issuance and exchange of digital assets. Any project can issue new tokens on the chain, and existing tokens (coins) that do not depend on smart contracts can migrate to Binance Chain and get benefits from low latency and high throughput on the network called Binance DEX. The network will help further to aim of peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading.
It is too early to see if this development will help boost the cryptocurrency market but there seems increased interest in the market and the binance development could be a factor.
Present situation
24hours ago BTC was trading at $5,253 according to CoinDesk data. Since then it has reached well above the $5,300 level with a high of $5,353 and a low of $5,235. At 10:05 Central Daylight Time BTC was trading at $5,305 up $52 dollars over the open or about one percent.
The top 20 cryptocoins are mixed with few big swings in either direction. Perhaps the market is consolidating before the next move. The present price of bitcoin and the top 20 coins can be found here.
