Rising around $50 in price, Bitcoin had a crazy ride this week. Breaking the monotony that we’ve seen for the last 18 weeks with only single digit changes and the occasional bull run, the rise from $260 to $310 is reminiscent of the kind of trading we saw last year.
Also Read: Last Weeks Market Wrap Up
With a steady buying pattern this week, Bitcoin users experienced steady gains in price with no signs of stopping soon. Interestingly enough, most of the trading seems to be occurring inside the United States rather than being dominated by the Chinese markets like what is usually the case.
If you examine the movement of Bitcoin over the last month as seen above, you can see that price has been nearly a linear line, meaning the exchanges have been saturated with buy orders. With price starting at $230 and climbing $80; a 34% increase in price in the course of a month is impressive, even for Bitcoin.
Volume has been even higher than it has in the past weeks as well; we saw 24-hour volumes in excess of $100,000,000 this week. While that number has decreased since then, the volume is still quite an impressive amount at above $50,000,000. Trends continue to show positive trends, and we may witness further price increases.
Altcoin Market Analysis
While Bitcoin had a significant share of the trading as it usually does, Litecoin this week gave Bitcoin a run for its money. Briefly overtaking Bitcoin in 24 H volume as well as Ripple in market cap, Litecoin this week kept climbing past the $5 it reached last week to go on to reach a high of 0.0316 BTC, or around $8.50.
Promptly after, Litecoin crashed hitting bottom at 0.012 BTC, a nearly 60% fall in value. Since then, the price has leveled off, and price is holding steady at around 0.02 BTC or $5. Volume has decreased in the meantime too but is holding nicely at almost $17 million. Interestingly enough, at the same time Litecoin was falling Bitcoin was rising, which could suggest that traders were exiting Litecoin to trade Bitcoin.
While Bitcoin and Litecoin are where most of the attention as well as volume was focused on this week, we also did see some rises in some older coins, such as Namecoin and Peercoin.
Namecoins increase, while temporary, did see the price surging past the $1 mark, but has settled down to around $0.80 once more. Peercoin experienced the same fate but is sitting around $0.10 lower, with the current price being around $0.69.
With reports expecting to see Bitcoin at $400 before the end of the year, Bitcoin could also go back the other way. Bitcoin could either stagnate here or decline back down to the mid $200s, making the market movement we see here nothing more than an elaborate pump and dump. For the next couple of weeks, all eyes will be focused on the market conditions of Bitcoin. Altcoin trading volume is increasing as well, a sign of renewed interest in altcoins as well. All in all, the bearish market trends we’ve been witnessing seem to be appearing less and less, akin to spring thawing winter ice.
Photo Sources: CMC, BitcoinCharts
Where do you see Bitcoin at the end of 2015? Are you more excited about altcoin or Bitcoin trading right now? Let us know in the comments below!
