Bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, has recently seen its price break through a critical resistance level, which saw some declare the end of the bear market. Given the cryptocurrency’s performance, the crypto ecosystem’s market cap surpassed $200 billion.
According to CryptoCompare, one bitcoin is currently trading at about $6,720, after rising 7.6% in the last 24-hour period. In the last 30 days, the cryptocurrency is up by nearly 30%, despite various negative headlines affecting the industry.
Notably, BTC jumped after breaking the $6,400 resistance, which acted as a support for it last year when it was dropping from a $20,000 all-time high. In November, the $6,400 support broke and BTC ultimately fell to a $3,200 low, before starting to recover. Since then, the cryptocurrency has now seen its price more than double, and so far this year has been outperforming commodities like gold, and the market’s benchmark index, the S&P 500.
What’s behind bitcoin’s price performance is unclear, although theories abound. Some believe that BTC breaking above its 200-day moving average and scoring a golden cross last month, where its 50-day moving average crosses above its 200-day moving average, justify the price performance.
Others point to growing adoption. As covered, a survey conducted for Fidelity Investments found that 47% of institutional investors believe cryptocurrencies are worth investing in, while 22% already own some form of cryptocurrency. The flagship cryptocurrency has also notably been shrugging off bad news, and kept on rising despite numerous incidents.
Notice the pattern: bitcoin stopped caring about bad news. $BTC pic.twitter.com/lgk5qo5lYw
— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) May 8, 2019
Earlier this month, crypto exchange Bitfinex was accused by New York’s Attorney General of covering up an $850 million loss and of engaging in fraud, along with Tether, a company it shares management with. More recently, leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance got hacked for 7,000 BTC (worth over $40 million).
As seen above, the cryptocurrency’s price quickly recovered from both events. After the Binance hack rolling back the Bitcoin blockchain was considered – a move that could hurt people’s confidence in BTC altogether – but nevertheless its price kept going up.
Altcoins Follow Bitcoin’s Lead
As would be expected, most altcoins have been following bitcoin in the rally, with most being up significantly. Ethereum’s ether, EOS, and NEO are all up between 6% and 7%, while XRP, Zcash, and Dash rose between 1.5% and 3%.
Notably, a few altcoins have been outperforming bitcoin itself in the last 24-hour period. Bitcoin Cash, for example, is up by 9.6%, while Litecoin is up by 14%. Brave’s Basic Attention Token,, which is now being rewarded to users who opt-in to see ads, rose 11.1%.
Thanks to these performances the crypto ecosystem has added over $10 billion to its market cap in the last 24 hours, helping it to go over the $200 billion mark.