Cryptocurrencies on Track for Hefty Monthly Gains; Bitcoin Lags the Pack
Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies were on track for heavy monthly gains on Monday, though Bitcoin, the number one digital currency by market capitalization lagged the pack.
At 8:53AM ET (12:53GMT), Bitcoin inched up just 0.05% in the last 24 hours to reach $9,293.20 on the Bitfinex exchange.
After ending March at $6,925.30, Bitcoin went on a rampage, busting through the $9,000 psychological level last week. On the last day of trading in April, it was last up around 34% for the month.
Despite the significant gains this month, Bitcoin lagged its three largest rivals.
By descending market cap, Ethereum rose 1.32% to $689.12 in the last 24 hours, registering gains of around 75% so far in April; Ripple edged forward 0.7% to $0.84899, adding to monthly gains of nearly 71%, while Bitcoin offshoot Bitcoin Cash, while inching up just 0.04% on Monday at $1,400.50, seemed to be a preferred choice for cryptoinvestors this month, leading its larger rivals with a monthly jump of nearly 105%.
Among recent bullish news, France lowered the tax on cryptocurrencies to just 19% last week, significantly lower than the previous 45%, while profits are now categorized as “Movable Property”.
Dan Morehead, chief executive officer of $1 billion cryptocurrency hedge fund Pantera Capital Management LP, insisted last week that Bitcoin “is a screaming buy right now.”
Morehead said he expected Bitcoin to reach new highs within 12 months, and said the crypto market could balloon to even $40 trillion in a 10-year forecast. He added that institutional investor interest in tokens is also on the rise.
Those remarks coincided with news that Nasdaq could consider opening its own cryptocurrency exchange.
"I believe that digital currencies will continue to persist...it's just a matter of how long it will take for that space to mature," said Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman. "Once you look at it and say, 'do we want to provide a regulated market for this?' Certainly, Nasdaq would consider it."
However, digital currencies still have their detractors as Bitcoin itself remains a far cry from its $20,000 mark hit last December at the height of cryptocurrency hype.
Guru investor Warren Buffett once again lashed out at cryptocurrencies as an investment in an interview with Yahoo Finance published on Saturday.
According to Buffett, when you buy cryptocurrencies, “you aren’t investing (…) you’re speculating.”
“If you wanna gamble somebody else will come along and pay more money tomorrow, that’s one kind of game. That is not investing,” he insisted.
The same line of thought was expressed by former Intuit CEO and founding Paypal CEO Bill Harris in an opinion piece for Recode published on April 24 in which he accused Bitcoin of being “a scam”.
“In my opinion, it’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen,” Harris wrote, adding that “some cryptocurrencies are complete frauds.”
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