Investing.com – Bitcoin's value remained stable on Christmas Day, starting the week on a positive note after having lost value in 7 of the past 8 days leading to Christmas.
On a day of moderate volatility by Bitcoin's standards, Bitcoin rose 2.3%, or $308, on the Bitfinex exchange to trade at $13,858 by 7:07AM ET (12:07GMT). Bitcoin is up 19% from yesterday's low of $11,601.
The most popular cryptocurrency –which trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week- hit a record high of $19,891.00 only last Sunday in the run up to CME’s launch of Bitcoin Futures.
Bitcoin officially entered a bear market, technically defined as a 20% plunge, on Thursday, with most market experts commenting that the alternative currency was long overdue for a correction.
Since that Sunday top, the alternative currency is currently down around 30.3% at the time of writing. However, Bitcoin has still rallied around 1,280% from just under $1,000 at the beginning of the year and maintains gains of nearly 39.8% in December alone.
Cryptocurrency rivals are also enjoying a relatively calm day of trading.
At 7:13AM ET (12:13GMT), Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin, gained 9.65% to $723.77 and is now up 6.02% the last 7 days.
Bitcoin-offshoot Bitcoin Cash remains almost unchanged on Monday, gaining 1.05% to $2796.7. The currency that was the result of the “fork” from the world’s largest digital currency on August 1 in a move that was designed to be able to process transactions more quickly at a lower cost held onto weekly gains of over 55%.
Similarly, Ripple - designed for banks and global money transfers and with one of the more affordable price tags- rose 1.38% to $0.985 after having just having passed the historical milestone of $1 a day earlier. The “low-cost” bitcoin alternative held gains in the last seven days of 42.2%.