Cryptocurrency market update: Bitcoin and altcoins pumping

Nobody really needs to be told that the general sentiment surrounding the cryptocurrency market right now is very much of the bullish persuasion. Bearing in mind that most coins are still down by between 80-99% since their all-time highs, we’re now starting to enter a new season as prices begin to slowly pump upwards.

There’s ample historical evidence to suggest that Bitcoin and its merry gang of altcoins have made it through the worst of the year-long bear market, and that everything from here on out should be considered an accumulation period.

That’s really good news if you ask me!

Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s market capitalisation found support near $71 billion on Sunday, supported by an upsurge in trade volumes that was accompanied by the launch of a new BitMEX futures contract.

Looking at the one-hour chart, we see volume has been surging in the green for the past few weeks, which could translate into short to mid-term bullish momentum. As long as buyers are strong enough to keep price above the 20-day EMA, around $3,800, I really don’t expect BTC to fall that much for the time being.

During the weekend, Bitcoin reached $4,000, which currently sits on the 50-day EMA – right now, that is BTC’s resistance level. While Bitcoin remains in the 20/50 EMA tunnel, traders should be confident the coin will remain between these levels.

Much like last week, volume remains close to $9 billion.

Ethereum

The average retail investor might be bearish on Ethereum as it is currently down by over 90% from its bull market high of $1,400. From that point of view, no one in their right mind would touch an asset that can virtually wipe out your capital in a year.

However, Ethereum has lost so much that people are now buying-in again. The volume from November 2018 to February 2019 is the highest volume cluster in Ethereum’s history on Bitfinex. In other words, people are keen to get in because they likely see enormous potential.

Also, Ethereum is printing a bullish higher low setup. This tells us that even the smart money investors are front running each other. That’s because when Ethereum starts another bull run, a move here to the top end of the yearly range of $1,350 translates to gains of over 720%. More importantly, the next bull run will likely print new highs. Therefore, $1,350 may be just a conservative target.

ETH is currently trading just below its 50-day EMA, and I believe it will find support at this level quite soon.

Litecoin

The only other major coin to shake off the worst from 2018’s crypto winter, besides Binance Coin, is Litecoin.

Litecoin is the 2011 fork of the Bitcoin Core software implementation to create a coin with similar properties to Bitcoin, but which processes new blocks every 2.5 minutes instead of every 10 minutes, and which uses the more computationally-intensive Scrypt for Proof-of-Work hashes instead of SHA-256. This is explained here.

As the next Litecoin mining reward halvening approaches in August 2019, crypto investors are filling their bags with Litecoin. But ‘digital silver’ still has a way to go to reach its pre-2018 crypto winter valuations.

If LTC holds above the 200-day EMA, above $52, I see no reason why we wouldn’t see a major Litecoin breakout when Bitcoin starts to pump. On the next jump, I’m expecting price to bounce up to $72-$74.

Stellar Lumens

A new logo, growing adoption, and a coveted listing on Coinbase Pro marked an extravagant week for Stellar. XLM rose more than 22% during last week to reach its highest level since January. On Monday, daily trade volumes peaked north of $265 million, levels not seen since last year.

In the eight days through Thursday, XLM had risen some 35% and was eyeing its first big resistance test north of the $0.11 mark. The cryptocurrency is currently trading just below that level but looks poised to extend its breakout thanks to growing mainstream attention and a major adoption drive involving SatoshiPay.

Earlier this week, German financial media company Börsenmedien AG announced a stake in the Stellar-backed micropayment service, opening the door to greater XLM integration. Plus, Stellar can be secured in blockchain.info, alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum, and holders are able to retain a percentage of Stellar Lumens gas fees shared by pools – much like weekly dividends.

Binance Coin

As we approach spring 2019, BNB has been the only top-20 coin to rally to price levels from before 2018’s crypto winter.

Since the launch of the BitTorrent token, BTT, which saw 59.4 billion tokens sold for around $7 million, another Binance Launchpad-powered ICO, for Fetch.AI, grabbed $6 million for the coin’s developers in 22 seconds. The next Binance Launchpad ICO will be on March 19th for Celer.

For risk-tolerant day traders who’ve been following along closely seeking short-term opportunities for high rewards, the ability to make those kind of returns on a speculative investment in promising new cryptocurrencies is throwing fuel on the fire of the raging demand for BNB that Binance has so methodically built.

Despite the crypto community’s (albeit in many cases, rather compelling) disparagement of the ICO bubble, crypto investors continue to have a relentless appetite for ICOs in 2019.

Has the new bull run finally started?

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