November 15th Market Update: Cryptocurrencies Mixed After Day of Massive Drops

Following a day of massive and widespread drops, cryptocurrencies are currently experiencing mixed trading, with Bitcoin trading down slightly and XRP further solidifying its number two position by market capitalization.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at $5,570, down 1.2% over the past 24-hour trading period. It is currently trading up from its daily lows of $5,350, which is also the lowest price BTC has seen in 2018. It appears to be stable at its current price, and trading volume is slowly declining.
BTC’s recent price drop has led its market cap to drop below $100 billion to its current levels of $96 billion, and its market dominance has declined slightly to 52.8%.

XRP Secures #2 Position, Bitcoin Cash Falls
Ripple (XRP) is one of today’s best performing altcoins, currently trading up 2% at its current price of just over $0.46. Today’s gains have placed the altcoin’s market cap ahead of that of Ethereum’s (ETH) by approximately $300 million, a relatively small amount.

XRP has recovered from its daily lows of $0.43, and is seeing decreasing trading volume, signaling that it will likely range at its current price levels until Bitcoin makes another move.

It is important for investors to note that although BTC is sitting near its 2018 lows, XRP is currently priced 84% higher than its 2018 year lows of $0.25 and has gained market dominance over the past few months due to the release of Ripple’s xRapid settlement system, and increased utilization from non-Ripple companies, like Coil.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fell even further today following its hard fork event and is trading down nearly 5% at its current price of $412. It is trading down 35% from its recent highs and is showing little sign of recovering any time soon.

Analysts Say Fundamentals are Still Strong
Although market sentiment has crashed to new yearly lows along with Bitcoin’s price, analysts still believe that the technology underlying cryptocurrencies is strong, meaning that all the immediate price action is simply noise.

While speaking to MarketWatch about the latest price drop, Naeem Aslam, the chief market analyst at Think Markets U.K., said that he isn’t too concerned with the daily pricing action.

“The simple fact is that I am not selling bitcoin in my portfolio, in fact, I am not even interested in this day to day market action. So the recent sell-off hasn’t changed my view about the technology or the potential it has. Wait for the currency or the debt crisis and the day it knocks on the door, guess who is going to answer the door? Bitcoin.”