Investing.com – Bitcoin came under pressure for the fifth-straight day as investors had to contend with a wave of selling in the main cryptocurrencies, while Ripple remained well supported near its all-time high.
On the Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin fell to $15,240, down $7.13% after recently hitting an all-time high of $19,891. The popular digital currency market cap fell to $262 billion.
Bitcoin fell victim to yet another day of heavy selling pressure, which has seen the popular digital currency’s plunge 20% over the past five days.
The slump in bitcoin comes as investors appear to be losing hope that the launch of bitcoin futures on the both the CME group and CBOE exchanges would usher in a period of institutional demand, establishing bitcoin as an established asset class. Bitcoin futures debuted on CME, the world's biggest exchange operator, on Sunday but investor uptake was tepid.
Others have noted, however, that year-end profit taking was adding downside pressure bitcoin, as investors seek to lock in gains on an impressive rally which has seen the popular digital currency soar more 1700% since the start of the year, outpacing the returns in the traditional benchmarks like the S&P 500.
The cryptocurrency pendulum, however, appears to have swung from Bitcoin to Ripple XRP as the latter rose to an all-time high of $1.07442.
The rise in Ripple comes amid heavy Asia overnight demand as buyers piled into the digital currency following recent reports that banks in Japan and South Korea began tests of Ripple’s digital payments technology.
Bitcoin cash fell 18.23% to $3019, after surging above $4000 to a record high of $4,104.3. Bitcoin Cash was created in August following a split in Bitcoin’s blockchain – the digital ledger which records every bitcoin transaction – in an event know as a ‘hard fork’.
Litecoin, meanwhile, continued to add to losses falling 1.83%% to $300 a day after founder Charlie Lee said he sold his entire stake of litecoin to avoid allegation that his remarks about the cryptocurrency were intended to affect the price for personal gain.
"Some people even think I short LTC! So in a sense, it is conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence," Coindesk reported citing a tweet from Lee.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell 3.96% to $762.23 well below its recent peak of $863 set on Tuesday.