After yesterday’s cryptocurrency market bloodbath, Bitcoin has continued its downward descent and has set new yearly lows in the $4,000 region. Today’s drop has once again pulled down the entire cryptocurrency markets, and virtually no altcoins were able to dodge this drop, including XRP.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading down over 11% at its current price of $4,325 on the aggregated markets and is trading even lower on individual exchanges. Currently, BTC is trading at $4,260 on Coinbase and $4,230 on Bitmex.
The last time Bitcoin saw prices this low was in September of 2017, right before the markets began their parabolic upwards move. BTC’s latest drop, which was unforeseen, has led to incredibly low market sentiment, with many traders and investors alike loosing hope that the markets will ever return to their all-time-highs.
Despite this, investors would be wise to remember that there are multiple positive developments for the cryptocurrency markets right around the corner, including a cryptocurrency derivatives product aimed at Wall Street investors and corporations – called Bakkt – and another institutional investment platform being issued by traditional retail brokerage Fidelity.
Altcoins Continue To Plunge, XRP Falls 10%
As always, the general altcoin markets followed Bitcoin’s lead, with most major alts falling over 10% in the past 24-hours.
Today’s decline is being led by Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which is currently trading down 30% at its current price of $219. BCH has been in a freefall ever since its hard fork event occurred on the 15th of November and is currently nearing its all-time-lows of $208. It is currently trading down nearly 95% from its all-time-highs of over $4,000.
Although XRP held steady through yesterday’s drop, it was unable to maintain its strength and is currently trading down 10% at its current price of $0.432. It is important to note that the cryptocurrency is still trading significantly up from its year-to-date lows of $0.25, which were hit in September when Bitcoin’s price fell to $5,800.
XRP’s good performance over the past couple of weeks has allowed it to further solidify its position as the number two cryptocurrency by market cap and is currently ahead of Ethereum’s (ETH) by over $3 billion.
Dash (DASH) is one of today’s best-performing altcoins and is currently only trading down 6% at its current price of $103.50. Despite not trading down as much as many of its peers today, Dash is still down over 35% from its weekly highs.
Although the state of the markets looks bleak, it is important to note that there have been almost no fundamental changes that warrant the latest price drops, and positive industry developments coming late this year and into 2019 could reverse the downwards market cycle.