The bitcoin price held above $4,800 on Tuesday, bringing it one step closer to reaching $5,000 and setting a new all-time high. The ethereum price declined for the day, but it managed to recover above $300 after a mid-day dip. Meanwhile, the altcoin markets began to plot their recovery after losing significant ground to bitcoin during yesterday’s trading.
Altogether, the markets added about $2.7 billion, with bitcoin accounting for virtually all of that advance. After beginning the day at $150.8 billion, the total cryptocurrency market cap has risen to a present value of $153.5 billion. However, what this figure masks is that when you take bitcoin out of the equation, the markets actually lost about $1.1 billion, which is why bitcoin has been able to raise its dominant market share to 52.2% of the total crypto market cap.
The bitcoin price appears poised to make its second run at $5,000, and perhaps this time it will sustain the advance. When the day began, bitcoin was already on an incline, having broken through the $4,500 barrier the day before. Once $4,500 was in its rear-view mirror, the bitcoin price began to scale the charts with ease, eventually extending as high as $4,878 on Monday evening. The bitcoin price has thus far been unable to break past a global average of $4,900 — although it climbed to $5,000 on Bithumb — and is currently trading at $4,820. This represents a single-day advance of 5% and gives bitcoin a market cap of $80.1 billion.
Like most cryptocurrencies, ethereum plunged on Monday as traders and investors began to consolidate their holdings into bitcoin. However, the ethereum price led the altcoin markets to a bit of a latter-day recovery, and ethereum climbed back to just above the $300 level. Ethereum is now trading at $301, which translates into a market cap of $28.6 billion.
The altcoin markets remained mostly negative on Tuesday, although many cryptocurrencies exhibited signs of a slight recovery from their mid-day lows.
One outlier is ripple, which had been on a week-long bull run that carried its price as high as $0.277 — a 7-day increase of more than 25%. That rally stalled on Tuesday, and the ripple price declined 7% to $0.251 as investors await a potential announcement that could occur at next week’s Ripple Swell conference.
Bitcoin cash ended the day at a 1% deficit after briefly falling as low as $289. The litecoin price, meanwhile, declined 3% to $50. Dash fared slightly worse, falling 4% to $286, but NEM managed to rise 8% after it was announced that several cryptocurrency exchange platforms and services — most notably ShapeShift — were adding support for NEM. The NEO price dipped 5% to just below $30.
Monero fell 3% but actually rose to 9th in the market cap rankings because IOTA’s 5% decline pulled its market cap below $1.3 billion. Meanwhile, bitconnect continued to stealthily climb the charts, rising 7% to become the 12th current member of the $1 billion market cap club.
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Last modified: March 4, 2021 5:00 PM
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