Since New Year’s, the cryptocurrency market has alternated between strong movements in both directions. For a while, Ripple had pushed Ethereum down to the third position in the list of largest cryptocurrencies. Investors began considering less popular altcoins such as Cardano, Stellar and Tron, which momentarily went on to display significant growth. At the moment, market dynamics suggest a moderate decrease.
Market experts are evaluating Ethereum positively for 2018. Its developers seem to be taking all the necessary steps for maintaining high transaction speed in the network’s ecosystem, while solid third-party specialists are likely to provide Ethereum with the main market positions by year-end.
This same situation seems to have a negative impact on the price of Bitcoin. The benchmark currency was on the rebound after a correction period, nearly reaching the $17,600 mark on January 6, before falling again due to negative news and general investor disappointment, with its developers’ passive position leading companies such as Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Steam to refuse to accept payments in BTC, primarily because of extremely high commissions and a massive list of unconfirmed transactions.
The market remains optimistic about solving such issues, yet Bitcoin now often finds itself compared to MySpace, suggesting the possibility that 2018 could be the year that it is replaced by faster and cheaper projects like Ethereum, or Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s Gram.
As well as position exchanges among main players, 2018 is expected to see the dissolution of up to 60% of altcoins. Also predicted is more tangible regulation and the restructuring of the global financial system with the further implementation of blockchain technology.