This week was characterized by fundamental news of: The Bitcoin Cash Fork disagreement which brought the markets down and Ripple overtaking Ethereum to become the second top digital coin by market capitalization. Additionally, there were opposing views from the regulators stemming from the IMF’s advisory opinion to governments that they should set up their own cryptocurrencies. The European Central Bank (ECB) distanced itself from the calls for national cryptos to be set up, terming it an evil scheme.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH/USD)
In the technical analysis, prices of most cryptocurrencies took a sharp drop across most markets chiefly due to the BCH hard fork meant to upgrade and enhance Bitcoin Cash’s protocol. This project initially ‘hard forked’ or otherwise split from the Bitcoin blockchain in August 2017. On November 14, it additionally split in two; BCH ABC and BCH SV. The result is that BCH ABC now has more accumulated proof of work while BCH SV was trading higher on crypto-exchanges. The fork led to a break of the recent stability, with most cryptos taking a 10% drop. Despite taking the beating, some like Ripple (XRP) went through mild recovery after the fork.
Bitcoin (BTC/USD):
The strongest digital coin by market cap veered off from stability following the BCH fork meltdown which saw it lose 10%, breaking the $6000 support level. Throughout the week, the coin hit a high of $6434.21 and the low point of $5358.38. The coin’s performance is a total deviation of pundits’ prediction that the coin would gain in value towards the end of the year. Among them is crypto analyst Tom Lee who had said Bitcoin would hit $25,000 by the end of the year. He however lowered his prediction to $15,000.
Ripple (XRP/USD) overtook ETH in market capitalization
XRP moved to second place as Ethereum took a beating. On the top, this week the prices of XRP were at USD 0.525536 and towards the bottom, it quoted USD 0.430398. Ether prices took a beating and lost its long-standing second place to XRP. Ethereum on the top, this week was at USD 212.62 and were at lows of USD 170.19 breaching the USD 200 mark by distance. The fork downpour in the crypto market and subdued prices over past few months resulted in Ethereum (ETH) losing its second spot to Ripple (XRP). Ethereum’s value plummeted 38.6% in the past three months, dropping its market cap to $18.1 billion. XRP’s value rose 61.1 percent in that same period, pushing its market cap to $20.5 billion. CRYPTO IS COMING!