The crypto markets regained a bit of the ground they lost during Sunday’s pullback, fueled by positive movement from the bitcoin price and ethereum price. The ripple price also achieved a respectable increase, leading the wider altcoin markets to a moderate advance.
Weekend trading had reduced the total cryptocurrency market cap below $170 billion, but the markets began to climb leading into Monday morning and had surpassed $175 billion at the time of writing. This once again placed the total crypto market cap within $5 billion of the all-time high it set at the beginning of September.
Bitcoin Price Bounces Back to $5,650
Sunday’s market dip caused the bitcoin price to temporarily fall below $5,500 for the first time since Friday’s record-setting surge. However, the bitcoin price experienced a sudden recovery late Sunday evening, causing it to leap from $5,508 to $5,731 in a matter of minutes. Although it has since tapered off a bit, the bitcoin price continues to hold at $5,659, which translates into a market cap of $94.1 billion.
As expected, bitcoin’s present rally has unleashed a new round of so-called “bitcoin obituaries”, with critics claiming it is overbought and likely to crash in the short-term future. However, as CCN has explained, the bitcoin price boom is built on sound fundamentals — not just speculation.
Ethereum Price Rises Amid Hard Fork
Ethereum deployed the Byzantium hard fork this morning, a protocol upgrade that is designed to provide the network with more security and scalability. As predicted, the ethereum price rose in the days leading up to the hard fork, although it did see a minor correction after bugs were discovered in the source code shortly before the release. Nevertheless, developers addressed these issues, and the hard fork was implemented early this morning and thus far appears to have gone smoothly.
After beginning the day at $325, the ethereum price climbed to $335 just before the fork. Then, following Byzantium’s deployment, the ethereum price spiked to $348, although it quickly pulled back to its present value of $341. Nevertheless, this represents a 24-hour increase of 4% and gives ethereum a $32.5 billion market cap.
Ripple Headlines Altcoin Advance
The altcoin markets participated in Monday’s recovery, and the non-bitcoin market cap rose by about $2.5 billion to approach the $80 billion threshold.
The ripple price headlined the advance, rising 7% ahead of today’s opening of “Swell”, a conference that the fintech startup is hosting in Toronto. Many investors believe Ripple will make a major announcement at the conference, leading them to increase their holdings in anticipation of the conference. The ripple price is now trading at $0.272, giving XRP a market cap of $10.5 billion.
Bitcoin cash and litecoin held at their previous day levels, while the dash price received a 3% bump. The NEM price spiked by 10%, enabling the cryptocurrency’s market cap to rise above $2 billion. Monero and bitconnect each rose by about 2.5%, while NEO returned a 1% gain to round out the top 10.